Stop Breaking Before it Starts

Nothing ruins a duck hunt faster than an ill-mannered, out-of-control retriever. The effort you have to put into disciplining your dog takes away from your focus on the hunt. The immediate results are missed shooting opportunities and aggravated hunting partners. In the long term, any bad habits your retriever gets away with while hunting will have to be addressed after the season, and that’s not a fun chore.

Without a doubt, breaking is the most common dog problem to deal with during the season. A retriever that busts out of the blind or jumps out of the boat as soon as you start calling can flare ducks that are working your spread. This is frustrating. Worse, and more dangerous, is a dog that bails as soon as the shooting starts. A hyper dog might knock down a hunter or jump in front of a muzzle, to name just a few really bad outcomes.

If you have to ask, “How do I stop my dog from breaking when I’m hunting?” you’re already in trouble. This is a habit that you should have addressed last summer. To be fair, however, even the most angelic dogs that don’t break during off-season training can turn into devils during the excitement of the hunt. That enthusiasm is awesome, but you have to rein it in.

It’s best to tackle this problem by looking at the causes of bad behavior and how to address them both during the off-season and in the heat of a hunt.

Manners Always Matter

Jessie Richards, owner of Full Throttle Kennel in Campbellsport, Wisconsin, says she drives home a non-negotiable point to all of her clients: Good manners matter all the time, regardless of whether their retrievers are going to be field trail competitors, hunt-test participants, or waterfowl dogs.

“A dog breaks for one main reason,” Richards says. “Because you let it. If your dog isn’t behaving while you’re trying to hunt ducks, you need to think about what else you’ve been letting it get away with during the rest of the year. Bad habits are always going to transfer over to hunting.”

You have opportunities every day to work on control, she says. Making your dog sit and wait until you give it an “OK” before eating is one example. Teaching your dog it needs to stay in the truck until you release it is another.

“Even something as simple as making your dog wait to go out when you open the front door is a habit we should all be training into our retrievers from a young age,” Richards adds. “You can’t let your dog do whatever it wants in daily life and then expect it will sit still and in control when you’re hunting.”

If you’ve instilled these manners in your dog from the time it was a pup, that’s great. If not, there’s no reason you can’t do some retroactive training, starting today.

Realistic Training

Each time a dog gets away with breaking, the problem becomes harder to cure. If you let habits like creeping and breaking slide during summer training, why would you expect things to improve during hunting?

“The main thing is to never let your dog get a retrieve if it breaks,” Richards emphasizes. “Let’s say it’s summertime and you’re working on marks and your dog takes off before you send it. Be ready to yell for your helper to run out and pick up that bird before your dog can get to it. Get your dog back under control, bring it to heel, and make it sit and watch while one of your training partners runs their dog. You have to make sure you’re never giving a reward for breaking.”

Richards also says it’s impossible to overstate how important it is to make training as realistic as possible. On opening day there’s going to be all kinds of excitement – splashing decoys, ducks circling, calling, shooting … It’s unrealistic to think a retriever that’s never been exposed to these things is going to remain calm amid the chaos.

“You want to introduce all of those things during training. Think about how to build as much excitement into training days as possible,” Richards says. “Don’t think your dog will just simply get used to the craziness of a real hunt after a couple of days.”

There’s one more key, and this might be the most important of all, Richards adds. “Here’s the big one: Train with lots of real birds. I know not everyone has constant access to training ducks, but you need to find a source for pen-raised birds and make it a goal to use them as often as possible. Nothing can match the excitement of the chance to retrieve a freshly killed bird.”

During Hunting

So, the season is underway and you’re struggling with an unruly retriever in the duck blind. Staying home is not an option because, well, it’s duck season. You know what you need to work on next year, but what can you do right now?

“Simple. Put your gun down and work your dog,” Richards says. “I know that’s hard to do sometimes, but if you can focus on your retriever and let your friends do the shooting, it makes a difference. This gives you a chance to keep a close eye on your dog and instantly make a correction if needed. That’s not something you can do while you’re trying to shoot. You can’t do two things at once.”

Another potential problem can crop if you’re hunting with two dogs, she adds. “A lot of times a dog that’s reliably steady will break when there’s another dog in the blind. Your buddy sends his dog for a retrieve and all of the sudden your dog breaks. It’s not always an issue, but dogs can be competitive, so it’s definitely something to be aware of and be ready for ahead of time.”

Richards says she’s been surprised to find out how many hunters tell her that they simply stake out their retriever or tie it to the corner of the blind when they’re hunting. While that can be a short-term solution for breaking, it’s not one she encourages.

“I can understand the reasons for doing that, but I’m not a fan of that approach,” she says. “If you have to do that to control your dog, then I’d ask, if you’re being honest with yourself, what else aren’t you in control of?” 

---