The Waterfowling Dog - Creating A Great Conservation Tool

by Joe Arterburn with Randy Bartz

Take your dog.

Sure, there are some waterfowl hunters out there debating whether a dog belongs in the blind, but there’s no doubt in the mind of Randy Bartz.

Take your dog, said Bartz, a kennel owner and dog-training product designer and manufacturer who has been involved with dog training since a 1964-65 stint as a sentry dog handler for the U.S. Army.

Those who say otherwise - that dogs are a bother, perhaps even a danger in the blind or that they cause distractions and movement that can spook approaching waterfowl - simply aren’t able to control their dogs, Bartz said.

By far, he said, there are more reasons to take a trained dog than there are to leave him home.

For one, it might keep you out of trouble with the game warden. Laws require hunters to make every reasonable attempt to retrieve downed birds. Failure to do so can be considered wanton waste of game birds, a prohibited offense.

Wounded birds sometimes lock their wings and sail up to a quarter of a mile before landing, leaving you with the daunting task of chasing them down, perhaps in heavy cover. Obviously, a well-trained dog can do it faster and more efficiently than you, reducing the amount of valuable time you would spend out of the pit, possibly flaring ducks or geese that want to come in.

And you can’t always wait for an appropriate time to go after a wounded bird. The sooner the better. "Many times if you don’t make the attempt right away, wounded birds walk off, making it even harder to find them," Bartz said.

Dogs, he said, "are a great conservation tool."

Training The Ultimate Waterfowling Dog

Bartz recommends making simulated-hunting waterfowl training part of the daily dog-training ritual early in the year. By that, he means getting out the decoys, a portable blind - or go to your blind if it’s a permanent blind.

There are a lot of good portable blinds on the market," he said. "It’s a good idea to get into a blind with your dog." Once in, you can teach the dog the position you want him to be in and get him used to the enclosed atmosphere. A dummy launcher provides a good simulation of flight with the report of a shot. Remote launchers, situated strategically around the blind, also work well to train dogs to watch for and mark downed birds, he said.

And, don’t forget the calls. Practice blowing your duck or goose calls with the dog in the blind with you. Go through the whole sequence as if a flight was approaching. Go through the motions from crouching down and peering out to blowing the call, ending with a retrieve from a dummy or remote launcher.

Work with the dog so they learn to quickly recover the bird (or dummy) and get back into concealment.

The Blind Retrieve

Teaching the blind retrieve will pay dividends. "The ultimate waterfowl dog will take hand signals," Bartz said. Waterfowl hunting, often with multiple shooters downing multiple birds, is a challenge for any retriever. But the good ones soon learn to mark falling birds and, add to that blind retrieves, and you’ve got an extremely valuable hunting companion on your hands. "I’ve seen my dog stand over a downed bird searching the sky for any other birds that might be dropping or wounded but sailing off," Bartz said.

Bartz believes blind retrieving is so important he has developed products to help ensure successful training.

"To speed the process, I use a black and white flag to point out the areas where the dummies are," he said. "It is important to do as much as you can to help the dog succeed. Dogs proceed in training by succeeding, not in failing." And, he said, those successes lead to confidence and a willing attitude to want to please.

The dummies his company, Flagman Products, produces are black and white, which makes them easy to see regardless of the background, plus they’re available with streamers attached which effectively doubles the visual effect, again helping the dog mark the dummies down and improving the chances of success.

His mainstay retrieving tool, in open country, is his 4-inch by 15-inch black and white dummy with a 15-inch streamer, he said. "I prefer the 4-inch diameter dummy because it conditions dogs to accept a bird of about that size. Ducks, pheasants, most birds other than geese are in the 4-inch range," he said.

He also makes a 4-inch by 6-inch dummy which he uses on pattern drills because they are easy for dogs to carry, particularly in brushy or heavy cover.

Remote Training Collars

"If you have a willing performer, by repetition you can create a willing worker," he said. And that, he said, is where remote training collars fit into the picture.

"So much of the off-leash control work is made possible by remote training collars," he said.

Such as blind-retrieve training, he said. You can dissect the retrieve and use the collar to reinforce the learning process step by step, from learning to stop, sit and look back for directions at the sound of a whistle to following hand signals.

"There are so many little things you can do with remote collars and launchers, like Innotek’s Command Series, that tie in nicely with dummy training," he said. "They’ve really changed the basic training and preparation of dogs. They make it so much easier for one guy to start these dogs and progress at a good rate."

Justifying the expense of a remote training system is easy, he said, if you look at the amount of time it will save in the training process, plus what you’ll save traveling to groups and clubs where assistance is available.

After his military career, Bartz worked his way up through the retriever field trial world, eventually becoming an eight-point licensed judge.

After purchasing his kennel, Lake Shady Kennels in Oronoco, Minnesota, he gave up judging, since you can’t earn money from a kennel while a judge, and switched his efforts to hunting test trials. In 1989, he left an insurance career behind to devote full time to the kennel. He credits his wife, Susan, who pitched in with long hours of hard work, with the success of the kennel and Flagman Products.

But it all, ultimately, comes down to the dog handler, Bartz said. "If you recognize the need to spend a little time each day with your dog, you won’t have much of a task when the season comes," he said. "A little bit each day gets you big results."

For more information on Lake Shady Kennels and Flagman Products ,call (507) 367-4782.