How to Teach Your Hunting Dog to Fetch Prey

Make hunting trips pure pleasure by training your hunting dog to fetch prey. Investing your time and patience really pays off as your pet masters this essential hunting dog command. Follow a regular schedule of short training sessions using the fetch prey technique described below.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Choose a realistic setting for the training. Replicate the hunting environment by training at a shooting preserve. Use live birds rather than dummy prey.

2. Take the dog to the shooting preserve. Plan to use the dog's own name as the "fetch" command. This avoids the problem of other dogs retrieving your prey during an actual hunting expedition.

3. Select a shooting location. Have your dog sit and stay next to you as you take aim.

4. Shoot the prey. Wait for the prey to drop to the ground. Wait another moment to make sure your dog has focused his attention on the fallen prey.

5. Say your dog's name as a loud, forceful command. Manually walk your dog to the prey. Reward her when she picks it up.

6. Return to the shooting location. Have your dog sit. Say, "release" and reach for the prey as you offer the dog a treat. Praise the dog as soon as he surrenders the bird.

7. Cease manually walking the dog to the fallen prey once she has performed Steps 4 through 6 successfully at least 10 times. Let her run to the prey as soon as you say her name. Praise her warmly after she returns to the shooting location, sits and then releases the prey to you.

Tips & Warnings

• Begin training the dog to fetch prey when the dog is at least 1 year old.
• Avoid training with many dogs and many hunters. This pack hunting can cause you to lose control of your dog and for your dog to lose focus.
• Avoid training more than 1 dog at a time. Otherwise, 1 dog may dominate the exercise by retrieving all the prey. This destroys the spirit of the other dogs.