Originally Posted by hotel4dogs

gdgli, I always say Tito has the best F'ing life you can imagine...food, feathers, and females!
Pete, it's at a public hunting area, not a club. They release birds there every morning, though. There are LOTS of birds out there!

Originally Posted by hotel4dogs

We are back from our morning of pheasant hunting, and what a morning it was!
Tito flushed 9 birds in 2 hours. What a nose this dog has, so typical of the goldens. He tracked the birds like crazy, excellent persistence, and when he was on a bird we just stood quietly and let him do his thing. It was awesome. He was giving me goosebumps he was so good at it!
The thing I didn't like was that the cover was very tall and thick, and about 90% of the time I couldn't see the dog. That's a huge leap of faith for me. I could hear his cowbell most of the time, and could sometimes see the weeds moving where he was. But it did scare me. The cover in the photo behind my friend is typical of what Tito was hunting in.
The really bad moment was when my friend missed a shot, and Tito took off after the bird. That's been my fear with him, and sure enough, he did it today. The cover is so tall and heavy that we couldn't see him AT ALL and had no idea where he had gotten to. I went into heart failure. He was gone for probably 60 seconds, which felt like a lifetime. I was calling him and whistling him in, and he came charging back from a completely different direction from the direction we had last seen him heading. So that was scary stuff. My friend said that he trusts Tito won't go anywhere, as soon as he realized he couldn't catch the bird he turned back. But still...
Anyway, we had a fabulous time. Here are a couple of photos of Tito with my good friend that took us hunting this morning.

Originally Posted by Pointgold

What a BLAST! I love pheasant hunting. Good boy, Tito!!!
You would really have heart failure hunting over the Pointers... they work out SO darn far... but there is nothing more amazing than watching a beautiful dog working and loving what they are doing. Glad you had such a fun morning.

Originally Posted by hotel4dogs

No kidding!! I can't imagine having my dog 400 yards away, out of sight, for long periods of time! But I've seen them work, and they are awesome. Not for the faint of heart, though (which would be me).
I was, I guess, kind of surprised at how little hunt tests (AKC or HRC) have anything to do with hunting after we experienced our pheasant hunt. Sure, they are a very fun game, and they do show the dog has some instinct, but it is nothing like getting them out in the field and letting them "hunt 'em up", flush, and retrieve the bird.
Tito says forget the titles, THIS is what he was born to do.