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Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Foundations podcast. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is sort of a love

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Speaker 1: letter to what I consider to be the best game

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Speaker 1: bird out there, but also how that relates to dogs

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Speaker 1: and the truth about all upland hunting opportunities. Look, we

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Speaker 1: all have our favorites. I don't know yours might be

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Speaker 1: chuckers because you live out west and your dog has

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Speaker 1: a beard and that's the most challenging bird you're gonna

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Speaker 1: run across. Or I don't know, you might be from

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Speaker 1: down south somewhere, and while you'd give anything to have

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Speaker 1: more quail to hunt, the truth is that the annual

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Speaker 1: dove hunts are your favorite time to get out. For me,

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Speaker 1: it's the pheasant, which I'm gonna talk about today, But

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna go deeper than that into dog behavior and

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Speaker 1: how we can use any real type of hunt to

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Speaker 1: shape the way our dogs work for us and with us.

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Speaker 1: So buckle up because it's time to talk dogs and

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Speaker 1: upland hunting. As a kid, there were two hunting uppportunities

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Speaker 1: that took forever to come my way, and the wait

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Speaker 1: for both just pure absolute torture. The first was in

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Speaker 1: my home state of Minnesota, which is, you know, at

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Speaker 1: the time, the only state I thought I'd ever hunt,

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Speaker 1: because nobody ever traveled waiting on whitetail hunting bow hunting.

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Speaker 1: When I was a young fella, you couldn't hunt till

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Speaker 1: you were twelve, So the time leading up to that

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Speaker 1: was full of a lot of practice shooting with my

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Speaker 1: first compound, and a lot of wishing and a lot

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Speaker 1: of waiting.

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Speaker 2: It sucked.

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Speaker 1: But when I finally did turn twelve, I got to

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Speaker 1: finally bowhunt deer, and then I quickly learned how bad

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Speaker 1: I was at bow hunting deer, you know, which is

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Speaker 1: fodder for a different podcast that isn't dedicated to dogs.

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Speaker 1: The other opportunity I could not wait for was pheasant hunting.

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Speaker 1: My dad was an absolute pheasant hunting fiend, and so

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Speaker 1: was my uncle Billy. My dad worked second shift his

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Speaker 1: entire life, except for a couple years where he worked

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Speaker 1: first shift when I was young, and those years happened

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Speaker 1: to coincide with a time when Uncle Billy was a

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Speaker 1: sheriff in a town in south central Minnesota. Now, Billy

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Speaker 1: always had a really good black lab to hunt over,

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Speaker 1: and my dad likes hunting over dogs more than he

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Speaker 1: likes doing almost anything now. There was no age limit

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Speaker 1: back then for small game, so technically I could have

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Speaker 1: probably pheasant hunted when I was in kindergarten if I

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Speaker 1: could have held and shot a legal shotgun, which I

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Speaker 1: couldn't have, nor would I have ever been able to

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Speaker 1: see a rooster flush over the grass anyway. It wasn't

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Speaker 1: until I was eleven that my dad had enough confidence

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Speaker 1: in my gun handling skills after hunting squirrels and rabbits

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Speaker 1: to the point of being really really sick of eating

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Speaker 1: squirrels and rabbits, that he took me on my first

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Speaker 1: peasant hunt. It's one of my best memories, and I

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Speaker 1: remember the only rooster we flushed getting up in front

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Speaker 1: of me in one of those dreamy, slow, straightaway flushes

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Speaker 1: where they look like a colorful B fifty two lifting

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Speaker 1: off out of the grass. And while I don't remember aiming,

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Speaker 1: you know, which is something I still deal with to

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Speaker 1: this day, I do remember seeing a whole bunch of

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Speaker 1: feathers fall off of that bird when I shot, and

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Speaker 1: then I also remember sort of a stillness happening after that,

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Speaker 1: like the world just slipped away and time stopped as

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Speaker 1: I watched that rooster keep flying, and then the sound

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Speaker 1: of my dad and Billy are shooting brought that rooster

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Speaker 1: to the ground. It never occurred to me to shoot again.

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Speaker 1: I just kind of vapor locked after that first one. Now,

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Speaker 1: I do remember Billy taking that rooster from Rebel's mouth

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Speaker 1: and handing it to me and then shaking my hand.

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Speaker 1: And let me tell you something, there wasn't a person

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Speaker 1: in the world at that time who stood taller than

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Speaker 1: he did. In my eyes, It's cliched and probably stupid

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Speaker 1: to say, but I also kind of believe it to

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Speaker 1: be true that that was the exact moment that I

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Speaker 1: became a pheasant hunter, and it has stuck with me

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Speaker 1: ever since.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 1: Not everyone agrees with them being the best game bird

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Speaker 1: out there, but luckily for me, I don't care. I

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Speaker 1: just think they are badass and their story of how

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Speaker 1: they got here is pretty cool. But to understand their

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Speaker 1: history you have to go back eighteen eighty one. That

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Speaker 1: was the year that the first sea section was performed

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Speaker 1: by a doctor in Germany. Was also the year that

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Speaker 1: Louis Pasteur discovered a vaccine for anthrax and the Spigno

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Speaker 1: mammometer or however you say it was introduced as a

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Speaker 1: non invasive way to measure blood pressure. That same year,

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Speaker 1: the first steel Transatlantic liner took to the seas. A

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Speaker 1: little town in England called Godalming was the first to

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Speaker 1: have its streets lit up by electric lights, and the

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Speaker 1: International Congress of Electricians got together to figure out an

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Speaker 1: international system of units so that the world could all

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Speaker 1: be on the same page with the metric system. Well

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Speaker 1: most of the world anyway. In March of eighteen eighty one,

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Speaker 1: a ship called Otago also arrived at Port Towns in Oregon,

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Speaker 1: and in its cargo were sixty ring necked pheasants that

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Speaker 1: had made the long trip from Shanghai. A fellow named

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Speaker 1: Owen Denny had had them shipped over in the hopes

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Speaker 1: of establishing a population. Most of the pheasants didn't survive

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Speaker 1: to their destination, though, which was the Columbia River Basin,

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Speaker 1: but a few did. History doesn't say for sure whether

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Speaker 1: any of those birds actually took hold.

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Speaker 2: However, no one seems to know.

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Speaker 1: Denny wasn't one to quit though after one failed attempt,

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Speaker 1: and eventually he had more pheasants shipped in where they

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Speaker 1: started to find a foothold in both Oregon and Washington. Denny,

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Speaker 1: who had arrived in Oregon via the Oregon Trail of

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Speaker 1: all Things, wrote to a friend while he was working

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Speaker 1: in China about pheasants and said this, these birds are

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Speaker 1: delicious eating and very game and will furnish fine sport.

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Speaker 1: Hard to argue with that, I guess now. The original

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Speaker 1: birds were caught by net wielding Chinese farmers, who Denny

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Speaker 1: bought them from by the dozen when he lived in Shanghai,

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Speaker 1: where he quickly started daydreaming about having the birds around

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Speaker 1: when he went back home to the States. Interestingly, he

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Speaker 1: noted that the original shipment of pheasants survived the ocean

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Speaker 1: journey just fine, where they stayed relatively relaxed and only

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Speaker 1: a few of them died. But they didn't handle train

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Speaker 1: travel well, which stressed them out, and they often beat

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Speaker 1: themselves to death against their cages. It seems that pheasants

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Speaker 1: prefer the soothing motion of sailing over the jarring reality

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Speaker 1: of railroad travel. I guess. It's also interesting to note

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Speaker 1: that the original shipment contained Mongolian sand grouse and some

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Speaker 1: partridges as well as bamboo. Now the grouse and partridges

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Speaker 1: couldn't hack it, but the bamboo could. And if you

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Speaker 1: see a stand of it in the Pacific Northwest, now

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Speaker 1: you know where it most likely originated. Denny kept ordering

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Speaker 1: up pheasants and had enough political connections to get hunting

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Speaker 1: them banned until eighteen ninety two, when they opened.

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Speaker 2: Their first pheasant season.

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Speaker 1: Reports state that fifty thousand birds were killed the first day,

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Speaker 1: which seems like a wild guess, but who knows. I'm

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Speaker 1: sure they shot hens and roosters then, and maybe it

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Speaker 1: was an absolute slaughterfest. Those original populations in the Northwest

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Speaker 1: caught the attention of folks across the country and were

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Speaker 1: used to encourage the birds to survive and thrive in

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Speaker 1: many of the states we hunt them in today. I

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Speaker 1: think we're pretty lucky for that, even though some folks

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Speaker 1: still shit on them because they are non native. But

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Speaker 1: I like to point out to those fine folks who

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Speaker 1: say that that they are also generally non natives themselves,

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Speaker 1: a fact that it is easy to ignore, because if

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Speaker 1: we were to decide what belongs and what doesn't, we'd

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Speaker 1: rather assume we belong just.

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Speaker 2: Fine, thank you. Anyway. Pheasants are rat as hell.

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Speaker 1: They can fly, but they prefer to run until it's

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Speaker 1: either not an option or when flying just makes more

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Speaker 1: sense to evade predation or a load to sixes headed

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Speaker 1: their way. They are pretty good sized, so hitting them

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Speaker 1: isn't a problem, which is a joke because sometimes it's

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Speaker 1: a big problem, which is likely due to the fact

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Speaker 1: that they can fly up to speeds of like sixty

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Speaker 1: miles an hour, which is fast enough to earn you

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Speaker 1: a speeding ticket in a car, and an awful lot

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Speaker 1: of roads across the country.

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Speaker 2: That's cruising and also a.

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Speaker 1: Good explanation for why I sometimes go two barrels deep

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Speaker 1: throughout the fall and don't touch a feather on them.

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Speaker 1: Pheasants are omnivores, although in the interest of hunting them,

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Speaker 1: we tend to mostly think about them exclusively as vegetarians

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Speaker 1: or herbivores throughout the fall. The bug munching happens through

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Speaker 1: much of the year when the insects are active, but

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Speaker 1: most pheasant hunters I know are mostly concerned with cornfields

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Speaker 1: and soybean fields and milo and sorghum and whatever seeds

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Speaker 1: that could be most interesting to roosters from about October

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Speaker 1: through January. All of that's pretty cool, but why I

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Speaker 1: love pheasants is part nostalgia and part availability to me,

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Speaker 1: but also because they just try really hard to not

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Speaker 1: get killed, and that means the dogs have to figure

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Speaker 1: them out. They don't just have to find them and

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Speaker 1: flush them like they do some bird species, but they

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Speaker 1: often have to figure out in real time why the

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Speaker 1: scent is here but the bird is not. That game

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Speaker 1: is the best. And believe me, I get why people

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Speaker 1: love grouse or quail or even woodcock, but the pheasant

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Speaker 1: games different. Quail can be really tough to find, but

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Speaker 1: once found, they aren't likely to run their separate ways

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Speaker 1: at speeds that would make Olympic sprinters question their life choices.

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Speaker 1: Rough grouse well, hell, a lot of grouse species are

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Speaker 1: you know, close to pheasant in some ways. But let's

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Speaker 1: be honest here, it's pretty common to meet grouse that

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Speaker 1: just don't seem to be the mensa members of the

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Speaker 1: upland world. I love grosse, but I've never once had

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Speaker 1: a whole bunch of pheasants let me walk up on

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Speaker 1: them and shoot them with a bow. And I've had

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Speaker 1: grouse do that several times. One of my really good

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Speaker 1: buddies has a grouse on his wall. That he killed

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Speaker 1: with a rock, if that tells you anything. Woodcock are

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Speaker 1: great too, but pretending that they are, you know, as game,

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Speaker 1: You know, to give the dogs a real lesson in

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Speaker 1: evasion as roosters is simply cognitive dissonance. Now, before people

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Speaker 1: go not so, let me say this. If you can

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Speaker 1: hunt it, and the dogs love it, and you love it,

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Speaker 1: then that's awesome. I spend some time I'm in October

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Speaker 1: between deer hunts looking for grouse, woodcock and puddle ducks

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Speaker 1: with a dark barker, and I don't regret a second

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Speaker 1: of it. It's all fun and there's nothing better than

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Speaker 1: getting out with a good dog to hunt something. The

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Speaker 1: work with roosters is different, though, And know not all

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Speaker 1: pheasants are created equal. I know people like to talk

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Speaker 1: about pheasants as if they are all the same, kind

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Speaker 1: of like we do with people who we disagree with politically.

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Speaker 1: But it doesn't work that way. You can babysit pheasants

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Speaker 1: on manicured ground and walk easy paths between rows of

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Speaker 1: milo and shoot the crap out of roosters that sit

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Speaker 1: tight and all that junk. That's great if that's your thing.

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Speaker 1: Donuts for donuts, just like you can go to a

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Speaker 1: preserve and buy some pheasants and have them put out

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Speaker 1: in the field for you and your dog. That's a

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Speaker 1: thing too, and again you do, you boo. If you

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Speaker 1: love it, go for it. But wild roosters that actually

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Speaker 1: get hunted are the ones that will change you as

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Speaker 1: a hunter and will change your dog for the better,

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Speaker 1: at least in my opinion. They are the ones that

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Speaker 1: know the tricks and they employ them very well. They

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Speaker 1: are the ones that I ab freaking love because I

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Speaker 1: can watch my dogs have to figure them out in

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Speaker 1: real time, and there is often a tense reality after

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Speaker 1: the gun barrels start smoking and the birds hit the

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Speaker 1: dirt that they won't be where they should be, which

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Speaker 1: is kind of like the feeling of hooking a good

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Speaker 1: sized musky or northern pike on a crappie rod and

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Speaker 1: getting it all the way to the boat and watching

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Speaker 1: as your fishing buddy gets ready to stab the net

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Speaker 1: in the water where you know you're about ninety five

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Speaker 1: percent of the way to glory, but that last five

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Speaker 1: percent can be a real heartbreaker. Healthy roosters doing their

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Speaker 1: best to avoid you are one thing, but wounded roosters

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Speaker 1: with some go left in them or another. I watched

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Speaker 1: my old dog Luna chase down a bird I hit

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Speaker 1: on one end of a forty acre piece of public

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Speaker 1: one time, so I know how far she went, because

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Speaker 1: it was four hundred yards from fence to fence. That

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Speaker 1: bird did its best to avoid her and almost got

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Speaker 1: away with it as it flew. But she was no

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Speaker 1: slouch in her prime, and she caught that rooster as

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Speaker 1: it tried to gain some elevation. Every One who owns

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Speaker 1: a bird dog and hunts with them, at least enough,

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Speaker 1: get some few moments like that out of their dog

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Speaker 1: that just perfectly frame up why we love this stuff

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Speaker 1: so damn much. And I think about that specific retrieve often.

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Speaker 1: In fact, on that same parcel a few years later,

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Speaker 1: I hit a rooster that caught a serious tail wind

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Speaker 1: and sat down in a cattail slew across the road

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Speaker 1: on a different chunk of public. I marked it, hunted

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Speaker 1: my way over there, and then sent her in for

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Speaker 1: a hunt dead command. When we finally got there, it

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Speaker 1: took fifteen minutes, but she dug that bird up out

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Speaker 1: of the sawgrass and cattails and it was dead as

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Speaker 1: a doornail, and let me tell you what, she got

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Speaker 1: some extra belly scretches that night. I know a lot

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Speaker 1: of you listening to this don't have close viable populations

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Speaker 1: of pheasants to hunt, and that really sucks. If we

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Speaker 1: only had maybe an extra two hundred million acres of

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Speaker 1: CRP throughout much of the country, it'd be a different story.

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Speaker 1: But that's a dream that's never going to become reality.

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Speaker 2: That sucks.

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Speaker 1: But there are birds to be had for the willing

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Speaker 1: traveler who decides that the public land in some state

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Speaker 1: or another should provide just enough opportunity. Or of course,

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Speaker 1: you can go the pay to play route in a

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Speaker 1: lot of places, or you can just find your own birds.

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Speaker 1: But here's where things get a little tricky. We often

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Speaker 1: love the idea of the bird that works for us,

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Speaker 1: you know, the one that holds the most nostalgia. I

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Speaker 1: know a hell of a lot of Southern hunters who

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Speaker 1: wouldn't walk across the street to watch their dog point

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Speaker 1: or rooster, but they'd cage fight the entire UFC heavyweight

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Speaker 1: division to have even a remotely decent population of Bobwhites around.

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Speaker 1: We don't always get what we want, though, which is

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Speaker 1: why I think that so many people are so miserable

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Speaker 1: these days because with the NonStop doom machines we are

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Speaker 1: addicted to, we realize that not only will we not

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Speaker 1: get what we want, but a lot of people we

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Speaker 1: feel are undeserving are getting what they want, and that

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Speaker 1: kind of sucks. Anyway, that's a side trail I don't

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Speaker 1: really need to take. There are birds out there to

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Speaker 1: be hunted, and plenty of opportunities to find your new thing,

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Speaker 1: or if that's not in the cards, out of way

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Speaker 1: to get to your old thing. I promise you that

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Speaker 1: your dogs won't even know that you can no longer

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Speaker 1: really hunt bob whites in your state, but the drive

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Speaker 1: to the next state over might yield a good hunt

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Speaker 1: for something else. They'll just be really happy to be hunting,

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Speaker 1: and even if that means you don't get the bird

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Speaker 1: of your choice, you might get the bird of their choice,

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Speaker 1: which is really for most dogs, all birds that you're

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Speaker 1: gonna let them hunt. The way that I look at

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Speaker 1: this is that I do have my favorite bird, but

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Speaker 1: I love all upland birds that have ever hunted, including

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Speaker 1: the prairie chickens and sharp tails that usually do a

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Speaker 1: good job of humbling me when I head out west

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Speaker 1: to find them. But what I really love is just

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Speaker 1: hunting with my dog for something. If that happens to

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Speaker 1: be a late season pevesand hunt in the cat tails,

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Speaker 1: which is the closest thing to dying and going to heaven,

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Speaker 1: then that's great. I'm not going to turn my nose

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Speaker 1: up at a north Woods walk somewhere to see if

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Speaker 1: we can flush up some rough grouse. It's kind of

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Speaker 1: like having multiple kids. You can have your favorite, but

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Speaker 1: you better not make that so well known that it

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Speaker 1: keeps you from doing what's best for u all of them.

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Speaker 1: So what's your favorite bird? Is it available this season

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Speaker 1: to hunt? Or are you in a situation where that

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Speaker 1: seems like a distant memory and the best you can

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Speaker 1: do is settle for something else that is actually out

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Speaker 1: there on the landscape for you. Or could you make

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Speaker 1: a hunt happen for your favorite bird? Maybe it's quail,

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Speaker 1: which for some reason everyone seems to think can't be

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Speaker 1: found or hunted, but they can't well you know. Or

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Speaker 1: maybe the travel thing isn't in the cards for a

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Speaker 1: hell of a lot of us for very understandable reasons.

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Speaker 1: Then what Maybe it's time to find a new favorite game.

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Speaker 1: Bird to love, and even if you feel like that's

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Speaker 1: not in the cards, maybe should just pretend to love

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Speaker 1: the woodcock migration or something else while your dogs do

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Speaker 1: what they do, and in that process you just might

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Speaker 1: find that it's not actually the specific bird in a

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Speaker 1: specific location that you need in order to fill your cup,

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Speaker 1: but instead it's any location with any bird, as long

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Speaker 1: as you get to watch that tail go from back

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Speaker 1: and forth to all over the place, or your whole

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Speaker 1: dog go from a modeled white and liver blur in

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Speaker 1: the field to a sudden, quivering statue that says, whatever

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Speaker 1: it is, it's right in front of my nose, and

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Speaker 1: you had better get your ass over here, because this

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Speaker 1: standoff isn't going to last forever. Get out there and

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Speaker 1: find some birds to love, my friends, and come back

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Speaker 1: soon for more talk about dogs, which are the creatures

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Speaker 1: that we all love the most.

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Speaker 2: That's it.

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Speaker 1: I'm Tony Peterson and this has been The Houndation's podcast.

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Speaker 1: As always, I want to thank you so much for

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Speaker 1: your support. You know, if you want some more dog content,

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Speaker 1: bird hunting content, maybe you're hunting some deer right now.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you're thinking about planning a trip somewhere or something.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you just need a good recipe to cook up

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Speaker 1: some wood ducks or something that you shot earlier this fall.

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Speaker 1: Head on over to the mediator dot com and you

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Speaker 1: will find that we drop new content literally every day.

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Speaker 1: This goes for our vast podcast network, hunting films, how

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Speaker 1: to videos, tons of article, tons of recipes, tons of

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Speaker 1: news stories, just good stuff. Go check it out and

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Speaker 1: thank you once again for your support