E 165. Hunting Dogs with GDIY's Nick Adair

What's going on everybody and welcome to another episode of Lone Ducks Gun Dog Chronicles. We've got Nick Adair from Gun Dog at Yourself live in studio. Here in Camden, South Carolina, he took an Easter family road trip to visit family and brought his dogs along and his podcast equipment along. So, by golly, let's do a show together. So, we're going to talk to Nick about his adventures with his dogs, how he got started in training dogs, running his own dogs, hunting his dogs, that whole gamut plus how he started his podcast and the future of what that holds. First, let's get into patreon.com forward slash lone duck outfitters. If you enjoy this show, if we've helped you along the way with your dog, do me a solid hop on patreon. It's like buying me a beer and you get to join the community. So, amongst never before seen videos, we also do Zoom Happy Hours twice a month where you get to hang out, drink a beer and talk dogs with me. We've got some different tiers as well where you can have one on one calls to help you with your dog. You get discounts on gear plus. We're doing a almost all expenses paid trip. I don't know exactly how we're working it out, but someone on patreon is going to win a hunt with us in Mississippi. It's going to be bad to the bone. We're excited to have someone come along. It's a patreon only hunt. The only patreon members can come with us, but one lucky member is going to get a chance to win a free hunt with the lone D. Next up, the force fetch course. Hot topic, one of the most asked questions in a roundabout way, whether it's my dog won't pick up a duck. My dog drops the bumper coming out of the water. My dog keeps found hunt tests. It's doing this, this, this and this. In a roundabout way, force fetch really, really helps. We designed a course from start to finish a bunch of different breeds, a bunch of different personalities showing you how I do it so that you can do it with your dog. The link will be in the description. Check it out. Next up, man's best kind of baby. That's gun or you know it. They got a bunch of cool gear coming out for this year. We've been testing a lot of different things. Obviously, I can't talk about it at the moment, but really cool accessories, if you will, that are going to change the game and continue to improve our sport. Plus, when you're riding down the road and it hits the fan, you want your dog protected ride in a gun or kennel. You can slide into the DMs. We'll get you into one. Next up, is man, baby. That can't, that can't cartridge on Instagram, man. Tell him we sent you. I personally would start stocking up on waterfowl load now. Don't wait till duck season and when you do, order that biz mouth, baby. Next up, from the duck blind, who to hold him blind, it's that purina, the pro plan. 30-20, that's the food that fuels the truck alone. Duck. All our adults are on 30-20. The younger dogs, we keep them on. They're large breed puppy formula for about a year, depending on their size and all that stuff. You don't want them to grow up too fast. Nice and easy, baby. Then they get transitioned to the 30-20. Last but not least, are friends at DT Systems, the E-collar that we've been rocking for about six months now. The 18-20 is what I would suggest to most folks out there. They've got a bunch of different other products and lines within it. One of the cool things that they've got is the DT dummy launcher, which I don't use a ton because I like to have bird throwers out in the field and or wingers getting the dogs to look out. But what I do like using it for is pre-hunting season. You've got gunshot, apple line, working on steadiness. You are able to throw marks further than a hand thrown will go. I mean, that sucker will zing them out there. Then another little pro tip is I will skip one across the ground, shoot it right at the ground in front of me and the dog, as if you've got one that's cupped up and lands in the decoys. Super exciting. I'll use those as dogs are getting ready to go home and hunt or my dogs are getting ready to go hunt. We'll intermix that gunshot right at the line, nice and loud, super exciting, potential for a break, make a correction, etc. Check out DT Systems. Again, for someone who wants to get into a unit themselves, I'm really liking their 18-20. All right, Nick, welcome to the show, my friend. Yeah, I appreciate you having me down, man. Yeah, dude. I'm glad we made it happen. It's been a whirlwind last two weeks for me. I've gone from South Carolina to Georgia for a hunt test. Georgia to Alabama to train with Adam from the Dog House podcast. Adam to my buddy Dakota in Alabama. Dakota to hear, sleep, train that night, drive to Virginia, ran a field trial and a hunt test, drove back, and now I'm here with you, bud. The life of a trainer slash trailer slash just crazy man, right? Psycho. Yeah, I'm running low on steam, and now we're preparing to head back to New York. We're going to go to Charleston first, drop a few dogs off, spend Easter with the family there, and then we'll make our way to New York. Yeah, so how long you've been doing this snowbird loop pretty much? I think this is my sixth winter. Because that's something I hear talking to all the trainers that I talk to. They always talk about, you know, I wish I could snowbird one way or the other. And I'm just curious, like, how wide open did that open up your training opportunities by being able to come down here? Yeah, it's a good question. It definitely changed the game, right? So the first, I think first and second year as being out on my own, I stayed home. So we were slugging through snow. I didn't have a lot of dogs, so it was kind of back then, okay, I mean, we could get it done, but you're not swimming. You're doing tea pattern, you like shoveling snow, making a tea pattern field. I'll throw marks and I would stomp out a landing pad so the snow would be a little more compact. So bumpers or ducks would land in that little zone. So dogs don't know it or see it, but they'd be running through this foot of snow and there'd be the bumper, but I did kicked like a six or eight foot landing zone that that bumper could land in so they could find it. And we made do. I did more obedience at that time, you know, during the winter months. And I had to pay the bills. Then the family in Charleston, who we've, I mean, they are family to us now. You know, their boys call me Uncle Bob and they're just, they're great. Well, everybody calls you Uncle Bob. That's a great point. That's a great point. So everybody's family. That's true. But they've been good to us and so one year they're like, why don't you come down? We got a place for you to stay. The dogs can stay in our barn and two acre fence in backyard. And I think we did maybe two months that first year. Then the next year we did four months and then, and that was all in Charleston. And then the third year I split it up. So I did part Charleston part in Georgia with my buddy Blaine. Same with the following year. And then last year and this year we did Charleston and then came to Camden and our training at our friend Cara's place. You know, the answer is we're just lucky. Yeah. You know, I feel like if I want to up my game as a trainer, I can't stay in New York in the winter time. Yeah. And even in December and January, it's not great dog training time, you know, for a New Yorker. So what I look at it is that can be my off season and I'm doing air quotes everyone because there's no such thing. But dogs mostly will have gone home. You know, I might do a little forest fetch. I might do a little obedience or what have you and hunt and spend the holidays with family and be around. And then mid-January we roll south. Once everybody's done with their dog season, dogs come flooding in and we just get out of heads out, man. And you got to get that head start. I mean, the dogs need training. You need to get a jump start. And like you said, you're already trialin'. So it's, you know, you could have come down here cold and gone into it, but you probably had some dogs you needed a prep a little bit beforehand. And just to be honest, they're not where they should be. You know, that's, you know, first off, you saw a lot yesterday and today, I personally believe that they're not as good. The big dogs are not as good as they were in September, October. They went home and hunted. They got a little chubby. They, you know, just did their own thing. And I can tell like some of the decisions they make on their, you know, water entry, like where they hit the water verse, where they were hitting their water back in October. It's like, we're just a little bit rusty. We're still knocking the rust off and, you know, can they go and pass tests? Yes, and they have. But it's not exactly where I want them to be or where I know they were only, you know, five months ago or something. So let me ask you, since you come down here to extend your training season and kind of get the early jump start on it, do the people down in the south generally have a leg up on the rest of the country anyway? Or does it kind of balance out come summer when it gets too hot to work down down here? You guys are up there cranking it out up there. Does it kind of balance out throughout the year or do the guys down south ultimately just have the leg up on you? I would say the guys down south have a leg up on us. And then I have a leg up on probably amateurs up north, definitely, you know, where they can't. That's their home. They lose four plus months of dog training. And so that's also why it's a benefit. I mean, some of my clients, you know, you met Tilly today or yesterday and today. You know, Tilly won't train with me all summer long. She'll go home and live with my buddy. My buddy will come and train with me, but Tilly's not on my truck year round. But in the winter time, he's like, you know, I really wanted to make it further and further and her sitting in the house and the cold doesn't work. So I probably got four or five dogs that come that go home and keep, you know, I just keep them tight. Where was I going with that other than that? Oh, but it's the north verse Southern. I definitely think Southern folks have the leg up because more of their year is great weather. In the summer months, a lot of guys will take a summer trip north to get into the cooler weather. Right. So they are the opposite of me. But even like, like my buddy Adam from the dog house, right? He still trains, but he is up and loaded and ready to go. Yeah, basically. Yeah, his dogs are loaded. So when the sun is just peeking, he's already in the field with stuff out in the field, ready to work. So when they can finally see a duck, it's getting thrown and they can work, you know, however many hours. And they're probably, I would imagine tweaking their setups to make sure dogs are safe and cool and in the shade and hydrated and all the things that would go into potential heat exhaustion or heat stroke, but they're not slowing down. I mean, they're still getting after they might take like a little siesta midday at the heat of the heat and then come back out at five o'clock and work till dark. Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of what I saw in Tennessee is I used to live down the road from the trial grounds in middle Tennessee. And I would get up before sun up just to road my girls just to get ready for hunting season, but you know, I'm more I'm in the versatile dogs, pointing dogs. So it's a little different just exercising them. And the only people that I would see out there were some lab guys just setting up and I would be leaving essentially as they get started and then same thing in the evening. So that's kind of what I figured that if you're going to do it or at least be, you know, in contention in that game, that's what you what you have to do, right? Yeah. Up early rolling as soon as the sun cracks and then take a break. Yeah. Get them in the shade, get them cooled down and then ramp back up as, you know, it's just cool and awful little bit. Well, I'm glad that you can have me on your show for me to ask you a bunch of questions. No, I'm glad I hijacked yours with your first fetch line. So you're good. Would let me take back over tell everybody about yourself, you know, about your dogs, your the breeds and how you got into hunting with dogs. Yeah. My name is Nick Adair. I'm from Middle Tennessee and like I just said that I were on versatile dogs more specifically. I've got three now. I've got a German short hair pointer who's around nine going on 10 something like that and then small monster lander pointer. She's four or five ish in that range and then I got a little setter pup. She's about eight months old now. And so I've been in the doing this for around nine years now, not not super long but not like real new, at least in the in the DIY just companion pet or field. But yeah, that ultimately, like I've always had an affinity for hunting dogs and more specifically the the ones that really got me into it was a coon hunting and coon hounds back in the day. And then then I really kind of realized I outgrew the phase in life to where I didn't think I needed sleep. And so I love coon hunting, but I'll go like once or twice a year now, but those hounds men, they're kind of a different breed. Oh yeah. They live a different lifestyle. And so I kind of got out of that and then I grew up with a good buddy, Adam, who had a black lab and he kind of got me into duck hunting. And I just noticed that I was really kind of drawn towards the dog work more so than the actual hunting. I love the hunting, but the dogs were it was really what captured my attention and I just kind of jumped all in it. And I thought about getting a lab, but then the pointing dog kind of captured my attention and I've been an avid upland hunter ever since and started off with the German short hair pointer, which a lot of people getting in the uplands basically. That's generally the starter dog for most of them. Sure. Cool. So let's take a step back because I've only been coon hunting once and it was a lot of fun and talk to me about the dogs that you had that did that and some of the memories that were made there. Man, so I had a Redbone coon now. Anybody that kind of had an interest in coon hunting, probably our generation growing up, where the Redfern grows. And I think I read that when I was six or seven and I said one day I'm going to have a Redbone coon. What was its name? Crockett, Tennessee man. I had to stick with the roots there. So yeah, me and Crockett and I knew absolutely nothing, which in the hound dog world really isn't the worst thing to do. The knowledge base to train the dog, it's kind of in their blood or not. And if you can get them on the exposure, get them on some game. And I did a little bit, not nearly as much as I should have because I got them when I think I was 19 and so I was in college. And so I had an interest in it. I loved it. But also there was a lot of other interest in life when you're a 19 year old dude in college, right? Yeah. So in between the partying and all that stuff, I'd go out there, but man, there's something different about the woods at night when it's just dead quiet and you just got a coon hound off in the woods balling and it just, it really is something special. And I did it as long as I could. And then about 25, 26, it's, you know what, that sleep kind of catches up to you. Yeah, lack thereof. Yeah. So talk to me about like a real memorable coon hunt. Uh, honestly, it's kind of cliche, but just his first one, right? You know, there's been a couple, he wasn't, he wasn't a knock down coon dog by any means. He wasn't winning any PKC hunts or anything like that. This was just enjoyment hunts and it was ultimately an excuse for me and my buddy Adam again to go out there and we'd have a couple tall boys in the coat and we'd just sit there until he struck one up or not and then we'd go home after a few hours. But the first one, man, it's like, that's the special one you're out there. It's like, I don't know what the heck I'm doing. He doesn't know what he's doing, but we're out here. We're having a good time. And then all of a sudden he lights up and you go up to him and he's actually, you know, on tree and you shine the light up there and there's, there's the coon and, and I shot it out of the tree and, uh, yeah, I'm like, all right, I got this coon. What do I do with this? No, and make a hat man. I actually, I skinned it. I did have the skin for years. It got lost in one of my moves, but I did skin it and borax it and preserved it and I didn't make a hat out of it, but I had it there for a while and, uh, yeah, man, it was just that that was really all the story was to it. You know, you're standing in the middle of the woods at night and, and you wait for the dog to key up. And I mean, if people that haven't witnessed or experienced a coon hound just balling in the middle of the night, it's just, it's just different. That cold air it just carries and, and you go to them and they can be, you know, half a mile off and you, and you go and shine your light and hopefully see them. And then since then I've kind of had the privilege of hunting with guys that really know what they're doing and they have those championship coon hounds and contrasting that to what I had like I was, I was just, I wasn't even in the same realm as them. You know, those dogs to where you go on a good PKC hunt to where, you know, there's multiple dogs out there and they're competing kind of like your trial situation. You really kind of see what, what a high level coon dog does. And, uh, and it's, it's different man. Those guys, you know, they play for keeps man there, they're after it. It's, it's really neat. And now if you could describe the traits of what makes a great coon dog, like the ones that were winning and what not, what, what were they like? The ones I've been on one PKC actual like trial. I've been in the field with a couple PKC dogs, but I actually went out on a PKC hunt last year in Illinois. And, uh, from what I gathered again, not an expert here on, on this, but it's, it's the ones that can pick up the cold scent and follow it usually. And so you got your cold nose dogs and your hot nose dogs and the cold nose dogs can pick up that scent that's been there a little, a little longer. Like maybe that coon cross that path hours ago compared to the one that just crossed 15 minutes ago. And so like, you know, pretty much all the dogs should be able to pick up on that warm scent, but it's the ones that pick up on the one that crossed a couple hours ago and can, and can track that one to the tree within the time period and get those points for it and stay on tree because, you know, just like what we're dealing with it, how many dogs that we talk about today that's just like, man, she just needs confidence or he needs confidence. Same thing in the Coonhound world where they just, they need the drive to go out there and find it. They need the nose to, to stick with it and track it all the way back to the tree, but then they need the confidence to actually that coon is up in there because you'll have some that'll literally just hit the tree and then they might lose confidence that's in there to leave it or you have some dogs that are stubborn and, and I think if I, some coonhauner is probably going to get mad at me, but I think they call it a slick tree where the, the dog thinks that the coon is in there. Maybe it climbs up there and jumps to another tree nearby or just kind of skirts up and then jumps and keeps on hauling to the next one. You get a lot of dogs that'll get hung up on that tree. And so if they start treeing on that one and there's no coon in there or you can't actually produce it, you get dog points, right? And so it's, it's all a balancing act and it's just, you talk to real cooner, hunter that can explain the point system and what goes into it. You start realizing that there, there is an art to it. Right. But they're just a different breed man. They run really young dogs just because they need the dogs that can, that, that can haul ass. Yeah. And it's, it's this cool. That's awesome. I dig it. When they do a trial, how do they know that there's any coons in the area? They don't. Oh really. So it's just like, Hey, we're going to this patch of woods. Yeah. Should be cooney. Yeah. From my understanding. Yeah, Cooney. It's, from my understanding is like you'll have, if they do a trial in a certain area, you have their judges and the judges tend to be from that area. And so like they'll kind of put a run in a certain area to where they know that there should be coons there. They've come across them before or they've scouted it out or something like that. And they're not killing the coons in the actual trial. Right. So they'll go up, they'll tree and then they'll do a little screech horn and kind of shine the light. And that's all it is is confirm that they're on there, leash up your dogs, go down the way and let them loose and do it all over again. And then it's, you know, how many coons can you actually produce? And that's, that's the point structure. That's what you're after. So the screech horn, does that get the coon to like look out and? Yeah. So like when, when a coon is up in a tree, sometimes they'll like flatten down, they'll get in a, get in a little fork or something and the eyes, when you're shot on the light up in there, that's what you're looking for is the eyes. You're not so much looking for the actual like tail or the body, so to speak, you're looking for that shine in the eyes. And so when you do the little screecher and that's exactly what it is, it's this little thing that they play like, and it just screeches out and it'll get that coon to kind of look up and look around. And that's when you can kind of see the eyes. And so that that's what it's for. So you kind of go up there, you're, you're shining the lights, you're looking for it, you're scanning it. And then if, if the dogs are trained, they're saying that that's coons in there. And then it's kind of like a last resort almost, at least from what I gathered. All right, let's screech and see if we get a reaction and yes or no. And then, you know, because you as the handler, you have two dogs on the ground, right? So you, both dogs can be on the same coon. It's whoever calls that tree first, right? And so you have to actually know the voice of your hound. And it is distinguishable, especially the guys that know it, just like us, we know, you know, most of the time we can tell the difference between you, you're barking on my trailer. Yeah. And, but it's a little different when you're dealing with two English hounds out there, ball and tree. And those houndsmen pick up on it. And I mean, I was out there to where both of them immediately were like mine. And like it's, if you call it and there's no coon in the tree, then you get docked, right? So you're kind of taking a chance to saying, Hey, this is mine. But that's where it comes into. You have to know your dog and your dog's voice. So it's a whole new element of knowing your dog. Yeah, super interesting. I love it, man. I feel like if I had all the time in the world, I would do that. I would, I want to play with rabbit dogs and beagles, right? Yeah. I don't know. Just seeing dogs that do what they're bred to do at a high level is cool. Of any kind. Of any kind. Working dogs in general man, hunting dogs. I mean, obviously we're, we're, you're into the, into the retrievers. I'm into the bird dogs for the most part, but I just, I nerd out on, on high caliber dog work. It doesn't matter the stock dogs, man. There's something cool about the stock dogs and the sheep dogs. Like you're talking earlier today about the further the dog gets out, you know, the harder it is to control them, of course, but the, the hurting dogs, man, what are they doing that with like a, just a whistle? Like, you know, it's, those, those guys are nuts. At the distance that they're sitting there watching their dogs control sheep, but I'm with you, man. I just, I nerd out at high caliber dog work of any kind. Absolutely. Yeah. So, let's, let's break down your, your first short hair. Uh, Rachel. Mm hmm. This is roughly 10. Talk to me about like her development, your, your both of your development, um, hunt tests, things that you've done with that dog. Yeah. Like everybody you get into this world, you know, everybody, I want a puppy. All right. I was on, I was no different. I was on the list to get a puppy. Um, and then the breeder I was talking with up in West Virginia, he just called me one day and he was like, you know, I know you're wanting a puppy, but, uh, I got this dog in my lineup. I'm, I'm thinking about letting go. She started. She's been force fetched and, uh, stuff like that. She's, she's right at one year old and, uh, and he, he just flat out told me he goes, you starting out, I think this dog can teach you more than what you can teach a young dog. And, and you know, it made a lot of sense to me. So, so I drove up there kind of test drove her a little bit and, uh, might, you know what? This, this feels right. This seems like a smart decision and, and, uh, to put my foot in the water and just, just figure out what this game is about. And, uh, and I did it and she came there, you know, there was a couple of holes, especially looking back on it now with the knowledge that I have now, there was a little few holes here in her for force fetch. I had to clean up a few things on that, uh, but she came to me raw besides, besides being force fetched. It was like she would hold point just enough for you to shoot, you know, kind of a meat dog ultimately. And, uh, so then I got into nabda because I was just like everybody else can green. I'm like, what do I do with this dog? How do I train it? And, uh, everybody says go check out a nabda training day. And so I did. And of course then I start drinking the Kool-Aid, let's start testing and I start down that, the utility path, uh, with her to, I got to get her steadiness done all the way through release. Got to get a duck search on her, got, you know, stuff like that. And, uh, that's really kind of where my, my education began is just talking to people at training day and trying to apply it to my dog. And, and we got through the utility test. I got a price to a couple, a couple of little holes here and there that just prevented us from being a prize one. And, and it was really handler error more than anything. Uh, but that just kind of started off my journey. And it's like once, once I did that and then I got in the grouse woods and I bagged a grouse or two man is no looking back. I'm hooked. Like, and then, you know, then you start looking at the next dog. What are we doing? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, uh, what did you, in the UT, what did you learn that you could have done differently or prepped her differently? Like, what did it look like? So I did a very crude, uh, method of steadiness. It was very, and when I say crude, I guess, I, simple should be the way I, I should say like there was no bells and whistles. There's no fancy like getting to know your dog or this method or that method. It was teach your dog, whoa, put your dog on, on a bird and just hit, hit her with the collar when she moves. And over time that produced the full steadiness on her. Uh, but it took forever. It took a ton of reps. I got there. Uh, but at the same time it's like, I didn't really take a whole lot out of her doing it because she's a German short hair pointer, right? So like, you know, you're not going to lose that intensity on point from, from or for the most part. But while I'm doing that, it's just like, it's slow going, but it's working. The, the main learning curve that I, uh, I had with her or the eye opening experience was the duck search, honestly. Yeah. And, uh, the duck search, I was banging my head against the wall on that. I was, I was trying everything everybody told me to do with her and it just, it wasn't clicking with her and I'll never forget. Uh, I've told this story on my, my podcast a number of times, but I was getting frustrated. I was about to pull from the test just because she could not figure out this duck search for anybody that doesn't know what that is and nabbed. You have, uh, one duck out there, a minimum of a two or three acre pond or swamp with obstruct objectives and structure. You're supposed to, you have one gun fire, you send them and then that's it. You don't do anything else. You're standing there. Literally just standing there. You just stand there and she's supposed to do a minimum of, I think it's 10 minute independently search, expand the search, hit different cover, check off the list ultimately. And I could get her to go out and that was about it. She would go out a little ways, pop and come back. And, and it was like every time I was trying a new method to try and get her to extend, it was like, it was making it worse. It was like, I mean, it just, and so finally I'm like, all right, this, this just, this just isn't working and I've got, she's a great field dog and that's what I care about ultimately is, is pointing. And so I was about to pull, pull from the test, but I'm, I go out on, on my back deck, had a six pack of beer. I'm like, let me, let me just think about this. All right. And, uh, I got to think I'm like, I keep taking the advice from these other people, but not one time have I really thought about my dog and what my dog was telling me. What is she good at? What does she like? What's the reward for her? And ultimately she likes to search dry ground the field and she loves to retrieve on dry ground. So by that, I just kind of came up with my own little method. I salt and peppered the front yard and just extended that using white bumpers to pull her out on land. And then when I got the good search for it, I started taking bumpers away to where I only got down to one bumper, then I replaced that with frozen birds. And then I did the same thing on water. And with, I mean, literally two, three months of me banging my head against the water day in, day out. And it's not clicking. It took like two weeks if that and I got a four and duck search. And it was like, that was the eye opening experience that I needed to man, your dogs kind of tell you everything that you need to know on how to train them, you just can't, you know, stop. You don't always have to have somebody else tell you how to train. Just kind of just think about it. The dogs are telling you. Yeah. No, that's smart, dude. Yeah, man, we don't have to get into a whole duck search thing. But when I was doing it, I salt and peppered that pond like that dog could not, right, not find a duck. If it went anywhere, it would have smelled a duck and found it and then send them again. And okay, there's five more to find. And then I just expanded, like you said, I just made the ducks a little further away and then a little further away, but there's still were six ducks out there to find. And so, and I wouldn't send them for all six. I'd do one maybe two and then I'd paddle out and grab the other ones. I also took my retriever background and I taught them force to a pile and I taught them force to water. So when I sat back, they left my side and got in the water and went and then were successful. And it was impossible to not be successful. And then they ended up learning to, you know, expand and search more. And I did a lot with live ducks out there too. So I would shackle live birds so they'd kind of like move a little bit. They couldn't dive on them or really get away, but there'd be some movement in the water to help maybe attract them once they really dug out there. And then the fact that it was a live bird that they could grab was like an ultimate reward from them, which the next time they come out, they want even more. So yeah, it's a great, great tip and good on you for what do I need to do with this dog? What does this dog need to be successful and think outside of the box that probably nobody thought of or told you, you know, they probably had knucklehead ideas of put a trap on a thing and do they have to do so many like. I went through so many of those examples, put a, put a launcher, a bird launcher on a buoy and floated out there and then just send her. And then when she acts like she's going to turn and come back, you hit the quack on the launcher and if that doesn't work, then launch the duck and that stuff can work. It's like, we're such an easy way to do this. And that's really all it was. And so like I didn't have the capability to use live birds because I didn't have my own pond at the time, but you're right. And then when you do get to the pond or the training grounds that you are allowed to use live birds, it's like that once the dots get connected, you can't really break the thread. It's like they're just amped up. And then you're right. It's, you know, just work on the recent because if they do get the duck and under that, uh, that time period, you have to recent and then there's no gunshot on the recent and there's no duck out there. So you're just, you're just sending them dry and just they need to stay out there. So, you know, that's where a lot of people in NABDA kind of overlook. I would say is they don't work on the recent and so they get these dogs and, you know, you hear a lot in NABDA. I just want to send them and I don't want them to find the duck. I'm like, well, that's kind of the opposite of what we should want for as dog trainers, right? Like I want my dog to be so proficient that they find the duck in two minutes, but I'm going to prepare them to be able to resend and stay out there. That's right. You know, I don't want to lose the, the purpose of the test just to pass the test. If that makes sense. It does. Yeah. No, that's awesome, man. So let's talk about you and Rachel's hunting adventures. Yeah. Pick two or three of like memorable hunts, places you've gone, people you've met, birds you've shot. Man. So especially this past year, we've had a ton of them. I mean, you get these dogs. They kind of take you all over to places. I started off with most of a lot of upland hunters where they started off with just kind of going up to the Northwoods, Los Chase Grouse and Woodcock. And so I started off with Wisconsin and man, there's no top and get, get your first rough grouse, right? And you know, that's a special moment. But if you're talking about like memorable ones, the ones that just I'm on my deathbed that I'm going to remember this past September, I went to Montana and we did Sharp Till Grouse, Sage Grouse and Hungarian Partridge. Cool. And man, we just tore it up. Every dog in the truck tore it up. Every, there's three of us and five dogs and every dog got a Sage Grouse shot over a point. Every handler got their limit of Sage Grouse. Like we just, it was the trip that like when you get into the uplands that you're dreaming about, that's what we experienced. And I mean, we had to go buy a second cooler for the meat. Like that's not typical of an upland hunt. It was just there's really no other way to put it. But like that's going to be a trip that is very tough to beat. And then fast forward this past January, we had a really neat experience and going to Arizona and chasing desert quill. Cool. And that was really cool hunting some gambles and scale quill. I missed on the merns. I didn't get my hat trick on all three of the quill out there, but just gives me a reason to go back. Right. So it's cool. So my buddy Harold that went with me, he got the merns and he also got the scale, but he didn't get the gambles. I got the gamble and scale and he didn't get the merns. But if you hadn't been out out southwest in the desert, man, that is, that's something special. What do you and your dogs have to do to prepare for that kind of terrain and temperatures and hazards like cactus? I mean, imagine cactus snakes. So man, you get into this game. You just have to realize that there's hazards out there to a certain extent. You're not going to avoid all the stuff out there. If you got a pointing dog and you want to go hunt early season prairie grouse, and the thing that keeps you from going to do it is the rattlesnakes. You're just going to have to go do it. You can do snake breaking. There's snake avoidance courses. It's just avoidance. It's just e-collar heavy. That produces a lot of good results for a lot of people. You have the rattlesnake vaccine, which take it or leave it. Some people swear by it. Some people don't think it does anything. I'd probably do it. Yeah. I did. Why not? I want to say it was like 40 bucks. Even if it only helps 20 percent. Exactly. 40 bucks for a safety net, possibly. I did it myself. I don't concern myself too much with the snakes. Though the cactus in Arizona, they're going to get cactus. It is what it is. Carry a comb on you. It's easy to just pull off, but they're going to run into it. If your dog's smart, they're only going to do it so much. If the cactus is so thick that all they're doing is running into cactus, go to a different spot. Really, that's all you can do is set your dog up for success or failure on that point. Besides that conditioning, we all talk about the importance of keeping your dog in shape year-round. It's not an on-season, off-season thing, especially for me. My dogs are going to stay in shape. By them staying in shape, we do a lot of roading. I do a lot of conditioning, whether it's hot, I'm swimming, whatever. A lot of roading and running, and that's going to keep their pads tough. It's going to keep their pads in shape. Even that, by the end of Arizona, you can start seeing the pads wearing down. When they're doing 20, 30 miles a day, sometimes if you have them out for a while, their pads are going to start eking away. That's when you have boots or you give them a day off. That's where the dog power comes in. A lot of people talk about dog power in terms of finding birds. There's that aspect of it. Dog power also in the fact that these dogs need breaks just like we do. You can't hunt one dog. People say, my dog will hunt all day. They might do hunt all day for a day or two. They might even go out for a third or fourth day, but you're losing efficiency. They might physically be going through the motions, but they're not going to be hunting as harder as well by that third or fourth day. Yeah. I'd 100% believe that. They're gassed. They're probably sore, tender, whatever the pads might be tender. Anything I can't imagine. That's kind of, I'm lucky because my setter is not a huge running. She's not a bootlicker, but she's not a speed demon and she's not getting gassed quickly. It's very methodical. It's almost like she slithers through the woods and is going at 60 to 70% speed, pacing herself. She probably doesn't know that she is, but she is, where it's like it's just not full out sprint and then an hour later, she's mouth breathing and can't do any. It's just methodical. She really can hunt for several hours, especially because our covers aren't vast. In an hour or two, maybe two hours, that covers toast. We've got a little bit of a ride, water, cool down, whatever, put her up. She calms down by the next cover. She's recouped enough, can go for another hour, 20 minute break, another hour. And luckily in New York in that time, it's not very hot. It definitely helps. Then what we'll do as well, so Kevin, my brother, who's not on the show today, he's probably going to be ticked at a little calm, but too many logistics. My buddy Nick and Huey, between the three of us, it'll be like, if it's just me, it's me and Nick, Nick, Andy, Huey, we'll run them both. Next cover, maybe one dog, next cover, the other dog, last cover, both dogs again, type of thing. You just kind of rotate them a little bit and get the most out of the dog and hunt smart. Hopefully find a bird. You work out your own rotation and some dogs work better solo than without. Like, we were talking about my Munstie yesterday and that's her. Like I hunt her solo. She does really well with another dog on the ground in terms of backing and honoring and retrieving still, but her mentality is she loves to retrieve so much, she'll actually start hunting for that back is what I call it, is like you'll see her kind of check up, slow up. And so it's not even so much that she burns herself out if there's another dog on the ground or she's not trying to steal a point. It's kind of like she hunts worse with another dog on the ground and some guys don't even see it. Like my buddies are like, oh, you're crazy. I'm like, nah, I know my dog like it. She should be finding more birds or searching better, but you find that rotation, especially when you have your buddies and you get to know their dogs. You kind of know who works well together. You know, this dog will be out at that range. Well, let's not get another hammer out that far. Let's get another one in between kind of getting the stragglers. And you know, it's one of those, you can kind of go off the deep end when you start strategizing that much. Yeah, too much. Yeah. But that's also one of the things that I enjoy kind of piecing the puzzle together because just like, you know, just because we're out there to have fun and enjoy it and it's our hobby, my take is like, we don't have to suck at our hobbies either. And so like, that's what I enjoy doing is really trying to pick up those patterns and get better every time we go out. Yeah. And then you talk about your small monster lander. Yeah. Why did you buy a dog like that? Man. So Lucy, man, she is man. Just I can't even just put into words like, hold on. So answer the question. Yeah. Why? So I was supposed to get another puppy. I was supposed to get another short air and I was on the list. And all of a sudden one of the training days, this dude shows up with a truck of small monsties and I'd heard about them. I'd read about them. Cool. I go follow them around. I'm going to go plant birds for you. I'm going to lay down a pheasant track. I'm going to do this. And Bob, I tell you like those, those monsties in his truck, I'm just sitting there. I'm like, those are some damn good dogs. Mm-hmm. Like they just impress me. And it was the use of nose. And that's what they're kind of known for is their use of nose tracking capabilities. That's their really strong suit. Yeah. And I'm like, well, I'm already on the list for a GSP pup. Like maybe on the next go around. Well, the litter didn't take on the short air. So I'm like, all right, well, I can either start doing the research, finding another litter, finding another kennel and get another short hair. Or I can literally do that and go check out a small monstie because the way I look at this is I'm trying to learn everything I can. And there's something to be said about the guys that have experienced numerous different breeds and handled different breeds. I feel like the guys that have owned and handled or trained like in your experience, numerous different breeds and personalities, I feel like in the long run is going to make you a better trainer. I think that's going to make you a better dog man, fill in the blank. And so I'm like, you know what? They blew me away. I did some research on the breed. Yeah, they're cool. Let's give it a shot, right? So I did the research, found her. Yeah, it's only a 13 year investment. Only, right? Yeah. And I tell you what, man, it's all my buddies laugh at me because it's like that dog right there will make me the happiest guy on the planet today. And then tomorrow, make me just want to completely quit dog training. But she has her strengths and weaknesses. And if you play to her strengths, she's good. She's good. And she's like, I'm going to start trying to make her into a short hair or make her into a setter, which she's not. That's when you get frustrated. And so like she still, she actually scored higher than Rachel on the, on the NABDA utility test. She got docked on one thing on the, kept her from her prize one. And that was her pointing. She got a three in pointing instead of a four because she has a little bit of a flagging deal going on, especially on pin raise birds. But she is a very cooperative dog. Like you want to talk about a dog that truly like only cares to, am I happy or not? That's her. And there's, there's a lot of good in that, but it can also be really frustrating when it's just like, just go hunt. You know, and so would you say she's more sensitive? Like sensitive to her surrounding, sensitive to your feeling, sensitive to me. Yes. Yeah. To the surroundings, the situation, no, to me. Yes. You put her side by side next to my short hair. Most people are going to think that she's a quote unquote softer dog in my short hair. My short hair will shut down quicker than her if you're doing like forced to pile or something. Like I, I force, I force fetch Lucy. I can put more pressure on her than I can Rachel. And you know, you would probably think it's the opposite, but it just goes to show like you can't really lump all the dogs in, into one category or not. You know, every dog is different. But man, she's, she's done great stuff for me. It's just, like I said, I mean, I've gone out to where I've been on hunts with people that put her in the truck. I'll take her right now. Then I'll go put her out and it's just like, what are you? Yeah, she's a beautiful dog. She's really cool looking. She's great build, you know, good size, happy little dog. Yeah. Just a cool, cool creature. Um, what's her most memorable point and, and hunt? So she, let's see here. She had a really good pheasant this past year. You know, that sounds really weird. Just one bird out of the entire season. But you know how it is when you have, when you have a pointing dog, like that just sequenced to she goes out there and she wasn't having the best walk so far. I mean, we're getting some birds up. We were fine and I'm, uh, where were you? Yeah, we're in Iowa. And, uh, and so we had one bird in the vest and we're actually working our way back to the truck and, you know, I'm sitting there. I'm not, I'm not thrilled. I'm not upset either. It's just kind of like, you know, whatever. And, uh, then all of a sudden she slams a point and like I said, she on pinaries bird, she flags a little bit. If she knows there's a bird there, she's staunch. I mean, just, you know, I'm not going to say a setter or pointer point, but like it's, it's a good looking staunch point. And she's not moving. Tales not moving heads locked in what you would expect from a pointing dog that staunched up. And so when she goes on that point, it's like, I know there's something here. And so I go in and, uh, we're kicking around and I don't, I don't come up behind the dog like most people do when the dog goes on point, right? I circle back around, I'm going in at a 45 degree or 90 degree angle, if not 180 degree angle, working back towards them. I try and pin the bird and force it to get up in the air instead of running, especially on something like a pheasant, right? And so I swing wide. Don't get anything up. I'm actually walking further away from her. I'm like, all right, pheasant, maybe it's running. Maybe I didn't circle far enough. I get really far out in front of her. Nothing's getting up. I turn around, I try and release her. I'm like, all right, go on because they're a tracking dog. Yeah. I just said that's what they're kind of known for. So I release her. If it's a running pheasant, she should track and she should find it relocated, point it again. She doesn't move a muscle. She doesn't budge. And I'm like, what is this? I'm like, maybe she doesn't hear me. It's Iowa, wind is whistling. It's whipping in my face, you know, all that stuff. So I start walking back and all of a sudden this giant freaking rooster just gets up like the green pterodactyl just gets up. I drop it. She goes and gets it, brings it back to me. And yeah, it's at the taxidermist now because it's just nice and my buddy actually caught it. I had the GoPro, my buddy caught it on his camera. So it's like, I have that memory and shrine now of her just just nailing that pheasant. And it's amazing. And that one's always going to stick with me with her. All right. I'll tell you a pheasant story real quick. So we're coming home from Master National. And I'm driving through Montana and I get a buddy of mine, a quick, really not a buddy. And so if he's listening to this, what I what I really mean is like an acquaintance who listens to the podcast, Instagram, I met him at Shot Show, super nice guy. And just like hits me up on Instagram, like, see you drove driving through Montana and he drops me a pen. I'm like, this guy is the man. Right. Appreciate that. Yeah. The man. And so I go pheasant hunting. I take Andy and I took Memphis who had maybe pheasant hundred one. She has no clue. She's just going for a walk with me. Um, and they're coming up this draw. It was a really funny shape, especially from New York. It was almost like a washout, right? It's a real deep crevice in this pasture and they're working from left to right up it. And Andy's kind of like super birdie and Matt's just running around like birdie, but I don't know what she's doing, right? What are we doing out here? And from the top of the crevice, the rooster gets up and flies back downhill and I rolled them. And amazing moment, like I'm walking back to my truck. I can see it. Like we hadn't found anything the whole, you know, I could only hunt for like an hour or two. So, but it would, I hunted it. Right. And we, I got them like smoked them, pumped dude, freaking put them on the wall. Andy ate the freaking day. It's freaking gone. It's gone now. So yeah, she, she broke into my office and that pheasant is no longer with us. Oh man. Yeah, dude, but that was a great memory. And even just her eating the day. It adds to the memory. It's funny. And, you know, so she ate the whole thing. There was nothing. No, I mean, it would get the tail fan or even some of the tail feathers or anything. Yeah. Yeah. I did. I kept some tail feathers. I stuck them in a picture, but yeah. Yeah, she gone or it's gone. Yeah. Um, so yeah, that was my, my awesome like moment of getting a rooster out west. And man, I'm not the biggest pheasant. I love pheasants as a bird, but overall, like there's, depending on where you're at the time of year, the, the habitat that you have to work. I'm not the biggest fan of it all the time, but there is something about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's something about a mature rooster getting up in front of you. So we in New York, they raise them and release them on state land. Yeah. Throughout a certain time of year and then has deer season kicks off, they stop releasing. I, with my old old dog Buck, we would go after work and pheasant hunt. It was just a quick, you know, go for an hour, two and we would get some or not or whatever. I would much rather haunt pheasant over a flushing dog in New York because of them running, because of the terrain, because of all that. I just prefer it. And the volume of them that I've shot in New York, it's like, I don't want to, I'd rather go duck hunting in Arkansas and flooded timber where or grouse hunting in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Maine, like, I'd rather go do those hunts than a pheasant hunt somewhere, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to try. Yeah. I mean, I'm right there driving through pins right here. You know, let's do this thing. Yeah. It really was a freaking awesome moment. Like it wasn't a pointed bird. They were working their way up the draw and it flushed them. Hell yeah. You asked for it. Yeah. Yeah. I am. I am an opportunist. So it was, it was pretty cool. All right. So you got your Munstie. Now you come to the Sutter side. Yeah. So my soft spot for the Sutter's, what made you choose that breed? So, I mean, I've had the privilege and the luxury of kind of hunting all over the country. I've hunted a ton of, I haven't hunted all the upland species, but I've hunted, you know, a little more than half of them by now. And, uh, and I've just realized that, you know, I appreciate each one for each little different type of thing that they bring to the table, but there's just something about rough grouse and there's just something about a Sutter in the grouse woods. And there's just something about a Sutter in general. They, they move different in the field, like just how they run, how they carry themselves. They're just different and, and when I feel that way, while you were looking for her today. I get, well, you know, there's some elements of a Sutter that, you know, hey, you want to talk about, I told you the other day, like she, she will run over that horizon. Like she, she will go. And, uh, but yeah, I mean, that's, that's one of the aspects I wanted. It's like, I want that. I want to see that smoke come up when I release her and go and, uh, yeah, man, it's just ultimately, you know, when you kind of get in on the pointing dog world, you know, a lot of people start with the German short hairs and I'm not going to allow. I'll probably, I'm not going to say for sure, but I'll probably always have a short hair in the stable. I mean, they're just, they're just badass dogs. Yeah, they're good. Uh, but the, the Sutter, man, I'm really digging her so far. It's just, it just, you want to talk about the tradition or the remainicism of, of, upland hunting. Like it just fits it and, and it just feels right. And, uh, it's hard to explain to guys that like maybe haven't done upland hunting it to that extent, but, uh, it took me a while. I kind of got into the space. I always knew that one day I was going to try a Sutter. I didn't know that, you know, I'd have one by now, but it was, it was a little over a year ago that I'm like, all right, the next one's going to be a Sutter. And, uh, I started looking and, and it took me a while to find the right, right litter and the right, right breed because it's like it's, Sutter's can be tricky. You get, you get those field trial lines that, you know, they stay 800 yards out, or you get the quote unquote boot liquors that are, you know, 50 yards and then, and, and what I like is that kind of middle ground. Like I want that, you know, 80 to 120 yards in the grouse woods and then, uh, you know, in the prairie or something 200, 250. That's, that's my preference. And everybody's different. You know, it's everybody likes to hunt a different way, but that's what I like. And, and it took me a while. And I think I found the right pairing. And so far, man, she's, she's living up to what I hope for. She's eight months old. So we'll see, you know, we haven't really connected on any wild birds yet. I've had her out. Uh, she's gotten a run in Arizona. We didn't luck out and come across anything there, but she's had some wood cock contacts and, uh, man, she's doing what you would expect from a Sutter pup. You know, you see her in the training field on a bird and, and she locks up and she makes you drop your jaw and it's, it's what you hope out of it. And, uh, I've really been paying attention and, and focus and intentional on her retrieve drive because I want to compete in some chute to retrieve trials. And, um, obviously by, by definition, by name, you have to have a retrieve on there. And that's kind of more or less the big question with a lot of Sutter lines is will they retrieve? Will they get in water? Maybe. Uh, but so I've been real slow and methodical with that. And I've really slowed down just from my experience with Rachel and Lucy, every dog, you should get better. You should kind of figure out how you want to go about training your dogs. And I've just realized like the more I'm doing this, the more I learn, the more people I have them on podcast, which has been going for four years now, the more just slow I go. I just slow down. I'm much more intentional and methodical and, uh, I don't know if natural is the right way, but I like, I don't like injecting myself between bird and dog. Like I want to keep that relationship as pure as possible. Obviously it requires some fingerprints by us from time to time, but that's kind of the mentality I'm going into it with this dog. Yeah. I think Sutter's are. Are so naturally gifted at the pointing. Andy could care less about retrieving Kevin's dog likes doing it. Um, she loves to swim. Andy will get in the water to her belly and cool off and lay down in it or whatever, but she doesn't care to swim. Um, and I started to force Sutter back in the day and it was not fun for her or me. And I really just looked at her and was like, what do I care? I mean, like it's my dog. Yeah. Need her to do anything other than to find me grouse and woodcock and point them. Um, and she loves it. And the encouraging words I would give you is your right. Let her mature. Nurture the natural instincts nurture the ones that may not be as natural if retrieving isn't as natural nurture the heck out of it. Um, and then maybe after this hunting season, which I think you alluded to, you were going to do like wait until she's a little bit older and that the grit that she'll develop in that first hunting season that guts the, the, oh, this is why we're doing this. I think it'll click and the next Sutter I get, I will follow through and do the same thing, but I will have it retrieved. Yeah. But I mean, Andy could care less like, bird gets up, I shoot, she's off looking for another one or, or we'll go and repoint, you know, that bird type of thing for me, like point dead or whatever. The, the, the pheasant hunt you just described, you had, you had Quinn, was it Memphis Memphis out there with her. Like, do you do that in the grouse woods too? If you're hunting solo, you don't have your buddy's dog out there. You don't have like one of your labs at heel or something to kind of shoot in because not going to lie, like that's to me, that's the ultimate goal. And, and what I'm doing is I want that pointer, flush or combo. Yeah. I want the dog to go on point. I want to be able to set myself up for the shot opportunity and send that fleshing dog in, be it a lab, cocker. I don't, springer. I don't care right now. I'll, I'll care when I start looking, but then I just get the shot opportunity. And so like, you know, you, you could probably have that if you wanted to, but your labs are probably a different game. I didn't know if you did any upland with them really. Um, no, I really don't remember. I kind of alluded to like the pheasant hunting is kind of with, you know, dwindled for me, at least in New York. I'll go. It's just not, it's not my favorite. It's yeah. I go with my dad and brother. Um, I enjoy being out there. I would rather go to the grouse woods. Yeah. Um, in the grouse woods, I'm there to watch Andy do her thing. And I'm there to like, I appreciate it. What it is. Yeah. I don't, I'd worry that like, what do I, I don't want to say is like what I've done in the grouse woods with Andy is now what I want in the grouse woods. I don't need to muddle it. I don't need to add confusion to it. I don't need to add another. I don't know if it would add enjoyment for me to have another dog that go in there and flush for me and retrieve it. If it does, maybe I'd be way more open to it. Maybe I should try it this year, but I feel like I'd be sitting there going here. Come here. Yeah. Or like maybe they would hunt closer and flush them like for me and I'd shoot them. Or would it muddle the opportunity that Andy could have gotten that point? Yeah. She swung out in front of me, slam that point, bang. Like, I just, I don't need it. It can add too many elements to it. And there's friends that do it. I just look at it like if I'm going in the woods, a, I love to grow something by myself. Yeah. Um, there's something about that too. And the other aspect of it is too. So shame on me if people don't like this comment, but I work all day with the labs. Yeah. It's nice to shut my brain off and go do something completely different. I mean, it's not worked. Right. I'm not working Andy. I'm not that that's. It's your break. You still get the, the love that you have for dogs and working dogs. Like we talked about at the very start of all this. Sure. But it's not your day job. Right. You know, if I had a lab there and it's like, you didn't see it. Now I got to stop at a handle. It's like, I blew off that. Well, I don't know. Yeah, dude, I'm going grouse hunting with Andy to go enjoy grouse hunting. I'm going duck hunting to enjoy duck hunting with the dog that I take duck hunting. And they don't have to be perfect duck hunting for me either. Like I ask and expect out here training. But I get a lot of enjoyment out of like, oh, that one was a good one. Yeah. Oh, that was a good mark. That was a good cast. Oh, man, that was cool. Yeah. Um, and when they don't do it right, it's not that big of a deal. But man, I, yeah, I just, I, I've separated them. I'll keep them separated compartmentalize, man. I get nobody wants to do their day job Monday through Friday. And then on Saturday, when they have the opportunity to go do whatever they want, even if it's like slightly different, they don't want to do what they do Monday through Friday on Saturday. Yeah. Like I had an opportunity a few years ago to buy a big duck boat and have somebody run it as a guide on Lake Ontario and some of the other finger lakes. And I was like, you know, I could, this could be supplemental income. Like this is another facet of the business. Like we could mold some loan duck stuff into this. This could be really good. And ultimately I just didn't do it because when I want to go duck hunting, I want to go duck hunting with my dad and my brother and my buddies. Yeah. Unplug unplug. And a lot of times I don't even want to pull out my phone and do social media. Oh, yeah. Because it's like I want to unplug and I still will, but it's like the moment is the moment and I'm trying to be in the moment, not always be loan duck. And man, that's always a tough balancing act for what we do with these shows and stuff like that. It's, it is a balancing act for sure because I mean, it's, you want to take in the moment, you want to appreciate for what's unfolding. But then also it's like, you, there's always that person in the back of your account. It's like, Oh man, this is a good shot. Oh man, this would be a good talking point. Like, Oh man, the Patreon patrons would love this. It's a, it's a very complicated thing to, to balance out and, and keep it for lack of better term pure, I guess. Yeah. And in the grand scheme of things, I'm, I feel so out of balance of yeah, working all the time, sharing all the time, helping people all the time. That. Yeah, some days it's just like, no, I'm, this is for me. This is what we're doing. Yeah. For sure. Um, segue into your show. How did you decide to four years ago come up with a podcast called Gundog it yourself? Dude, I got strong armed into it. My buddy, he listens to your shows. I guarantee he's listening to it. My buddy Austin. He, uh, he was in my ear for a little while, you know, me and him, he, he got into the Gundog world at the same time I did. And so we're kind of learning it at the same time, same pace. And, uh, he kept in my ear, you know, let's start a podcast. You know, there were other podcasts on the, on the scene. This was four years ago, roughly, uh, that did their own thing and, and had their own flavor, but they weren't touching on the dog training aspect in the way that like we were craving. Like we were, we were trying to find the knowledge and the information. And we just thought that it was kind of too difficult to come across the information that we were really after. And so he was like, let's start our own podcast. We can do this. And you know, at the time, I'm like, man, like we, we, we don't have anything to offer. Like we don't, we're not experiencing because that's it. That's it. We're just average everyday guys. And we're going to go find the information and figure out how to train these dogs. And, uh, so he was on me for a little bit. And, uh, finally he got through to me and, and, and that, what are we going to name it? And, and I came up with, well, you know, we're, we're gun-dogging it. So let's just do it ourselves. Gun-dog it yourself. DIY. Perfect. You know, where it works out. Right. And, uh, so GDI, why I was born and, uh, then he, he was able to, he did it for, for a little while with me. And then, uh, he got a big promotion at work and it was just too much to juggle. And so, you know, we've kind of gone through a few reiterations of the show and then fast forward to now, uh, it's just me and, and a couple of buddies help out from here and there, you know, doing what they can, but it's just kind of a, a side thing. They just enjoy it for what it's worth, but for the most part, it's just me. And, uh, and it's kind of developed into its own thing. And ultimately kind of, uh, I've kind of broken this out for you a few times getting to know you hear, I'm, I'm just after the information. I'm after the knowledge. I'm not out, out there to try and become the next upland celebrity. I'm not trying to do any of that stuff. I truly want to know the best way to train my dogs. Yeah. And it's kind of from a selfish standpoint is like, I want to train the best dog that I can. I need more information. Let's go to the sources that have the information. And we have a couple of fun, you know, BS episodes here and there, some hunt recats, but for the most part is me talking to the people that actually know what they're doing and it's proven. And I come at it from all different angles. I don't ascribe to one individual method. I don't even do just bird dogs. You know, I'll throw out a random hog dog episode or bear dogs or I think I did truffle dog episode a few, few months ago. It's just like back to the point, anything working dog related, I try and go fine because I think there's nuggets of information that applies and has overlapped across all spectrums of dog training. And I'm after that just as much as I'm after training my dog to whoa. And so like right now I'm in the middle of a whoa series on my show right now. And it's going to be six weeks of how to train your dog to whoa, but every week is a completely different method on how to do that. And so here's the information. You want to know how to train your dog to whoa, listen to all six, figure out which one works best for you and your dog and then go apply it. I'm not here to tell you which one is the best one. I'm not even most episodes, not even saying how I train it. It's just putting the information out there and letting the, letting the owners and handlers decide what's best or the right fit for them. That's cool, man. That's really cool. I think, you know, I look back on when I started digesting training information. I don't know. I was probably 16, right? You know, we had books, maybe a few DVDs. Yeah. And Gundog Magazine, like it was, it was very hodgepodge of how you could learn how to do it yourself. Fast forward. Now it's a everybody's got a podcast. Everybody's got a course you can buy, including mine, if you're in a flight and you know, YouTube, it's at everyone's fingertips. And to your point, like you don't have to do it my way. You don't have to do it your way or anybody's way, but you soak it all in, you digest it, you work on it, you grow, you question yourself every single day, learn a little more, apply it and grow. And I think the average person who is super invested in their dog and the art of learning this stuff is getting way better dogs than 20 years ago. Like they're able to take their dog to a super high level on their own with their nabbed a club with their retriever club, with their whatever because of all the info that's out there and it's their lucky. I mean, they're lucky. Yeah. Well, I mean, to your point, you know, when I got into this, like I said, I'm going to nabbed a check training days. I'm reading every single book and magazine article I can get in. And I'm still doing that. I mean, I got three books, you know, in my bag right behind me that I'm still trying to consume because, you know, I'm just, I'm just the average DIY guy still. You know, I'm not a pro trainer. I'm not even that proven in the test. Like I've done a little bit of testing, but it's not like I've, I'm that experience, right? I'm not decorated if you want to call it that I'm truly after the information. And as I've gotten into this world, I find it silly as like take, I'm in the versatile world. So like take that, for example, I don't understand why like people in your world, you guys are the specialist and retrievers. Why do people not come to you guys to learn the best way to train the retrieving side of the dog? And then conversely, why do some of the people that are just dabbling in the pointing dog world? Why do they not go to, you know, the people that have been doing it for 40 years in, in the steadiness in the field world? It's kind of like everybody buys into one method and I got so tired of reading a book and it's like, Oh, that makes sense. That makes sense. That makes sense. All right. I kind of have a good idea of what I want to do. Then the very next book that I pick up completely contradicts everything that just made sense to me on the previous book and literally discounts all of that. And I'm like, all right. So that entire method can't be trash just because this one book over here says it. So there's, there's good in every single one of these books, every single one of these methods. And I just got kind of tired of everybody being like, Nope, if you're going to train your dog this way, you have to follow from A to Z on this. And I think that is, I want to be clear here. I think that is a good thing for like people first starting out with their first dog, maybe following through one complete method because it's easier for them to consume, right? But the longer you stay in this, pay attention to what works best for everybody in different situations, because there might be a better way to train that one aspect that you're working on on the next dog. If that makes any sense at all. It makes sense. It does make sense. Yeah. How do I describe this? I agree. I think people should follow a program. I think having a bunch of knowledge collected in your brain of other methods and programs that like mold into yours and your dogs is really good. What I think people should remember as they're working their dog is just because you had a problem on something today doesn't mean you have to change what you're doing today, today or tomorrow or the next day. I mean, like we were in a boatload of dogs yesterday and today. And truthfully, they all didn't do well. Like it was a rougher. Like the land set up with the big dogs yesterday went well. My young dogs looked terrible and I'm sitting there going, what did I do wrong? You know, this, this shouldn't have been as difficult for them. I definitely threw them to the wolves a little bit. I ended up simplifying. I ended up doing a lot of different things to try and get them to be successful and da da da da da. But if I just trust my process, if I just trust that like, I didn't need to win today. I need to win six months from now. Right. You know what I mean? Like I need it to buy six months from now that I then I told you yesterday in two months, those dogs are going to be hammering. Yeah. They won't pass go. They, that won't be a thing two months from now. But I have the experience to know that it's going to be okay. Yeah. Where someone with their first dog that's going, Oh my God. They didn't do that a thousand percent. I mean, they're just going, Oh my, this dog is worthless. Like I should get a new dog. What I got to go read another book. I got it. I should phone into loan duck Instagram and be like, my dog won't do it. Like, dude, he didn't do it once. Yeah. You know, trust the process, trust the process. And that's where if you do follow a program that's vetted, right? Like a vetted program that has produced high level dogs, you will work through the mud to get back to dry ground. You will get there. Yeah. Um, but, but to your point, having a collection of other methods and thought processes and whatever is going to help say, cool. That was a struggle. I learned this from Joe Schmo. I'm going to try that over the next few days. Okay. It balances out. Now we move on. It's good. I just don't want people, I don't like it when people bounce around too much. And then they have a hodgepodge. Cause shaky foundation, if you will, we've all trained with those people to where every time you go in the field, they're doing some other new gimmick or different process or method and it's like, well, why are you on this? Well, it didn't work for me doing that. And like, how long did you try it? Well, like a week, I'm like, that method is supposed to be like a six month. Right. Learning process. And also I think this is where I focus a lot on, I say all the time, like focus on the why instead of the how is because you get these guys, they, they go through a process. Maybe it works out. They go through one method. It works out. And then for the next 20 years, that's all they do. And so when you talk to them, it's like, well, how do you turn a dog? It's like, Oh, you do this method. Follow it from start to finish. It'll do it. And I'm like, yeah, but why? They can't tell you. They just know that it's worked for them. And would you say that every method would work for every dog? The answer is no. But so there's context missing when everybody says, Hey, when you get, you know, how do I train this dog? Here's a method. Follow it from start to finish. More than likely it's going to work for the majority of dogs, right? Like the ones that have been tried and true, they've been around for decades. They're going to work for it. But if you don't understand the why, then then you can't really describe or, or even understand what really worked and what didn't. So you don't really even know how to improve off of it on the next dog. Correct. Yeah. I think the but for me is people don't stick long enough and, and have the confidence to trust the process. That's kind of like we did our forest fetch course. And I've got a bunch of people that have gone through it. And a lot of them have like jumped onto our patreon because it's like, okay, well, we're doing this. And no matter what I could have filmed, I can't show everything. And it's not like I didn't try to hide it. It's just you would anything could have you would have a thousand hours of footage. It's impossible. And you can't film every single dog every single day and even produce the one time that that dude's one dog did. Yes. Right. Like I don't even know how to recreate that moment to show. So a lot of guys are jumping on patreon and we'll do like a zoom or a face time or what have you to help get them through it. And it's just like, cool. That was a good session. Right. Well, he didn't do this. That's okay. We got tomorrow. Yeah. And we got the next trust the process. Don't go too fast. Don't go too slow. Trust the process. You know, 20 of them were great. Five of them were iffy and three of them were real bad. But what did he learn on the three real bads and the five iffy's and then crushed. Then he learned something. This is great. But those five iffy's and three real bads. That's what they focus on. And I'm the same. I feel that way like I'm in my brain already thinking about what I did today training where I'm like, I could have done this differently. Like that last dog I ran, you know, ping pong and all over the place. Like I shouldn't even have put her in that scenario. We should have had a bacon spread out. We should have. Simplified man. And I put her. But then you're in the situation. So now how you're going to know a minute. So I'm in it and I fought the good fight and got it to the bumpers and. And I think all that is so important for a special. I don't think she's going to be a bad blind running guy because today. Yeah. Yeah. And and ultimately, you know, don't go into a training session. This is something I'm telling myself every time I go into it. Cause I'm bad about this is I'll go into it. As we all do, you know, smelling the roses, we're expecting perfection. We're looking for perfection. Well, all we really should be looking for is improvement in some small way. Is those small incremental steps over time is what builds that dog two months from now that is going to crush the test. Right. And so we go out there. Really like sometimes forcing these dogs to a certain higher level to where they're just still babies, at least in that process. And that's why slow down, you know, really ask yourself, what am I out here to do? Like in the pointing dog world, it never fails to where. So many people will go out there to work, quote, unquote, steadiness. And then they get bogged down, trying to reinforce a retrieve or something in the field. I'm like, what did you come out here to do? Studiness. OK, focus on steadiness. They're doing that and you're ruining your steadiness session because you're trying to enforce a retrieve because, you know, maybe it wasn't the cleanest handoff. But then it turns into a retrieve session and well, so here, OK, I'll, I'll come back that. Yeah. I don't know what that is going to look like. Yeah, I bring the dog out. I have an idea of what's going to happen and then it all can go to crap. And in that moment, that's not, I wanted to get to this blind. Now we're not going to that blind. We're going over here. Yeah. Or I'm going to throw four marks today. And because this dog is moving at the line, I'm working on studies. I'm no longer working on marking. So I would combat that and say, if your dog. Like that's training. Yeah. OK. So take the moment and say, well, like I have, I had a dog today who didn't. She doesn't like a certain bumper that's in the pile. Well, you son of a gun, you, you are well beyond that. Yeah. And so I cast her to the blind. She actually ran a really great blind. So I should be proud of her. But then she gets to the pole and is like, no, there's nothing there. And I'm like, we both were like, dude, you know, I'm like, is there a bumper over there? There should be. We've only ran a few dogs. So I start walking out towards her. Yeah, there were three bumpers there. The three she doesn't like. That's a non option. Yeah, you're fully force-fetched. To my standard, you get to it and you pick it up and you bring it back. There's not a frickin thought. It blew my mind that this happened. So what did I do? I ended up doing a mini force-fetch session on those bumpers on the way back. On the way back, I threw a few fun ones to end on a good note. And then I ran two more blinds and she did great. But in that moment, it's like, I'm no longer working on the blind. I'm working on this task. We got that task done. We move on. If I have to do it again tomorrow, I'll do it again tomorrow. But I'm not. Anything can happen when you bring the dog out. Yeah. And therefore I have to say in the moment on my, like, think on my feet and say, OK, another example. We ran a huge down the shore blind today. A couple of the big dogs, Quinn and Hunter, like did a phenomenal job. But then they could see that orange blind stake and they're like, I'm getting out here. And it was just a little bit early. No, cast them off of it and I made them swim past the pole to put the point in their brain that I tell you when to get out, not when you want to get out. Because come hell or test easy. Yes, because when the going gets tough, I need them to have that. I will wait until he gives me the OK to get out, not when I feel like it or believe that I'm ready to get out. And so in that moment, was I running a blind or was I getting my point across to stay in the water until I release you, not release you, but like, tell you, hey, that's a good cast. Let's go get out. Right. So yeah, like that to me is. And all of that is fair. And I guess I should rephrase what I was saying because, well, no, you're a good good point. Someone might get bogged down on because well, you're you're absolutely right to where if you're trained up to a certain level, you can't let that slide. Right. I guess more or less, I'm talking about the people that like you haven't forced that your dog, you're going out there working field stuff, right? We're trying to work on you trying to be able to flush and shoot a bird in front of it. That is not the time to take a dog that hasn't been trained at that level and start addressing a retrieving issue. That is later on down the road. Sure. That's on the table. That's that's when you address that. And that that's what I'm talking about. Like you have to have a clear goal in mind and a purpose when you're going out and you have to be able to ride the waves. Dog training, like everything in life comes on high waves and low waves. And you know, the days that are good, you're just sitting back and you're drinking beer, just smiling like the day is great. Yeah. Then the when the waves are low, you're sitting back drinking beer licking your wounds. Right. Yeah. What's happened? Yeah. And it's it's part of it. And to your point, you have to trust the process. Now, when you when you hit that, you can't let those things slide because in your backtracking, just because we're working on this over here, doesn't mean that what we worked on last. This week goes away. It just becomes part of the new expectation. But I guess that's what I mean is like, you have to go out there with an actual clear goal in mind. And it's not that perfect finished dog at the end. It's a slight improvement ever so slightly to where like to some people, they may not even notice what you saw that it's just like, okay, that dog, it's it's buying and it's starting to click. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I agree, man. I just think that the point I would make one more time is we're out here training. We're not here to win the training day. There you go. Right. So I'm not looking for perfection along the all across the board. I'm not. I may switch gears and say, you know, we were working on marks, but now we're working on sitting still and you don't even get to pick up a mark today. Like I threw one for a hunter yesterday and he didn't even pick it up because for hunter, it was not a hard mark and he didn't need to go get it. He needs to sit still and he doesn't like he didn't even move, but it's like, what come here? No, here. Let's go. You know, so it's like in those moments, having the clarity in the brain to say, you know, what's our ultimate goal? Where are we going? How do we get there? And if something arises, tackle it, work on it, move through it and then revisit what your ultimate goal was in that session or whatever it may be. But it's a. It is a long journey. It's, it's the cliche marathon, not a sprint. You know, take things in stride, move slowly, move with purpose, think through what's going on state. I mean, there were plenty of times I wanted to be impatient today. Oh, yeah. And there were plenty, like I wasn't always patient, but it wasn't like the next dog I pulled out back to clear. Right. Like that's. And I told you that was the biggest takeaway. Like, you know, you're telling me, like, I don't think that you saw the best dog work yesterday and today. And I'm like, man, I learned plenty, honestly. And you're like, what am I, that's the biggest takeaway I took from watching you work these dogs where you have 20 something dogs out here. And the fact that you did not let one dog bleed into the next, you did not automatically assume because this dog, you know, sucked at it for this reason that the next dog gets a buy because of whatever you treated each individual dog as their own individual dog. And you were able to help a certain dog in a certain way. Then the next one is like, no, you know better than this. I'm going to help you, but it's going to be in a different light. And that's what I love coming in person, training with guys like you and all these other trainers and people that I'm getting to know in this world because that's the stuff that you don't see in videos, right? Yeah. That's you can't show that. It's 20 something dogs. You can't show that all day. And the fact that it'd be boring. Like, like I can't imagine sat through it. Well, some dogs like, you know, like you're just describing, you know, God, under your skin, it's just like, oh, man, you know better than this. I can't believe you're doing this to me. The next dog come completely clean. Like you did not take your emotions from that previous dog into the next one. Yeah. And to me, like that, that was a very eye opening thing to watch because I know me, if I'm in that moment, I'm going to go take a break. Sure. And you can't do that when you have 20 something dogs on the truck that you got to get through. Yeah, no, you don't. And sometimes I do, but now for the most part, you just take a deep breath. It's again, I'm not trying to win today. Yeah. So if it had a rough day today, tomorrow's a new day, you know, I'll recalibrate in my brain what what they're struggling on. I might set something up completely different for that dog tomorrow than everyone else so that she can get several days of not rest, meaning doing nothing, but a rest from difficult. Yeah. Let her go feel good again. Let her get going again and then bring in a little bit more challenge. I probably just threw to the wolves a little bit. You got to build her back up and then build her back up and then next time I'm thinking, Oh, this is a good time. And I'll just pull her out. I'll be like, yeah, you know, she'll run these two, not the middle one or something. You know what I mean? And people don't know what we're talking about, I guess, in that instance. But if we just did this left one in the right one and not try to split the middle, yeah, probably would have been a lot better. Um, so I just, I, I'm constantly moving and shaking and thinking and trying and trying to do my best. I'm not always right there, but I'm trying. Well, then that's all we can ask of anybody works. Sure. Their dogs. That's all we can ask of ourselves is do your best and try and improve. And that that's really, that's all I try and do is get the knowledge and try and get better in some way, shape or form every day. Yeah. Absolutely, man. Well, I appreciate you. You brought all your gear. So this is basically your show. Um, but I appreciate you coming on. Um, tell everybody where they can find your podcast, social media, um, and get a hold you to a lot more. Uh, I mean, where everywhere that podcasts are, if you just search gun dog yourself on Apple Spotify, Stitcher, whatever you listen to podcasts on, where, where they're going to get yourself, uh, social media, Instagram, Facebook, uh, undergun dog, get yourself. And, uh, we're brand new to YouTube. We got a couple, uh, hunt films out there. Uh, I will give you a plug, your grouse video with Nick Larson was awesome. I appreciate that. That, that was, uh, we didn't even know what we were doing going into the woods, but I'm very, very pleased with how that turned out. And I give pretty much most of the credit to Nick Larson, cause he's just a hell of a grouse hunter and I was just there fidgeting with a camera, but ultimately it was a lot of fun capturing that hunt. I got to, I loved it. My dog was on the ground and, and I got to capture that whole sequence. I got some good buddies out there for their first grouse hunt. So if anybody wants to know what an actual rough grouse hunt looks like with the dogs, you know, you, you YouTube grouse hunting, you can get everything from road hunting to whatever, but, uh, you know, I'm trying to do some of these hunt films in a little different manner. Uh, and yeah, man, we're just going to kind of see where this video space goes. We have a lot of big plans, whether we can make them kind of come to fruition or not, we'll see, but we're excited. So if anybody's kind of into YouTube and that sounds intriguing to them, look us up under that again, gun dog yourself and you'll, you'll find us. Awesome. And well, thank you so much for being a part of this episode. Thanks for all that you do, uh, for us here. And I appreciate it. And I'll see you, I guess, and he's coming to New York and sometime in May. So we'll do it, we'll do it again. Yeah. We'll just circle back and do it again. And I appreciate you entertaining, man. I know you're a busy guy and making time to, you know, entertain me and show me, show me the retrieving world. I, I enjoyed it, man. It's been a blast. We do. Thanks, bud. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ♪♪♪♪