Turkey hunting dogs

A place to talk about Deer/Elk Hunting and any other BigGame or Small game hunting Without dogs.
hillbilly boy
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Turkey hunting dogs

Postby hillbilly boy » Sun Oct 16, 2016 10:16 pm

Hey you all not to along ago they passed a law to let dogs be used for hunting turkey in the fall season I know that there is a lot of places were it would still be agest the laws to use dogs but if anyone is were they can do it do you know any books or anything about training a dog for it
Andyva
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Re: Turkey hunting dogs

Postby Andyva » Mon Oct 17, 2016 1:33 am

Turkey hunting with dogs has been legal in the fall here for a long time. There are a few people that do it. Everything is more fun with a good dog, but you can do the same exact thing without a dog with a little luck. You have to get a good bust, if they all go the same direction it doesn't work. If you get even one to go a different direction, you have a chance at calling it back in. Even with dogs, you don't always get a good bust up. I had a cur dog that would bust them good, I shot some on the jump while squirrel hunting that dog. The trick to a good turkey dog is that after it busts them, which any dog with four legs that wants to fool with turkeys can do, it needs to crawl in a camo bag and not move a muscle until you shoot. It takes a dog with a good handle on it to do this, something like a bird dog. Their was a guy that wrote in our state wildlife magazine that liked Brittanies. I have heard of some people that liked Brittany crossed on plott. Gave them a little more trail they claimed. I don't see why a good lab wouldn't work, they have been bred for laying still in a duck blind for a long time.

If you just wanted turkey salad, I had a real knucklehead of a treeing walker coon dog that would tree them at night. You'd start shining for a coon and turkeys would start flying out blinded by the light and smacking trees, you would swear you had a sasquatch treed the first time it happened. You could have filled up your freezer with that dog, but not exactly legal. My grandfather had a little fiest that would tree them, that was back in the days of the chestnut tree, he always said to shoot the ones on the bottom first or the rest would fly. Stuff like that is probably why they almost went extinct.

Now in west virginia, you can fall turkey hunt with dogs, but if you flip through the regulations, you can't do it if you are a bear hunter. The bear regs say you can't allow a dog to mess with turkeys. If you aren't a bear hunter, I guess it's OK, because there is a game warden over there that is a big time turkey dogger. If you look on the Virginia Game department website, you might be able to find their magazine, it's called virginia wildlife. They used to sell all the back issues from a year in one volume, they always had some turkey dogging articles in there, probably every six months or so, one of their editors was into it I think. Just stories and pictures really though, probably not worth paying for.

To sum it up, you need a close hunting dog that likes the smell of turkeys to run into the flock barking at them and then come to you when you get to where you heard them fly and crawl in a camo bag or a popup blind with you and be still while you call them in and shoot one.
david
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Re: Turkey hunting dogs

Postby david » Mon Oct 17, 2016 1:57 am

I don't know if it would work on turkeys, but the Finnish Spitz and other Spitz dogs like the elkhound etc. we're bred to tree a turkey-like bird they have over there. They are bred to be sensitive to the correct distance to keep the bird from leaving that tree, but if they left, the dog would try to follow and tree it again.
hillbilly boy
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Re: Turkey hunting dogs

Postby hillbilly boy » Mon Oct 17, 2016 1:02 pm

Ok I have got the dog down to a lab or a D.D and I know the idea is for them to find and bust up a flock of turkeys then come back and lay still until they are shot I was just wondering if anyone had any ideas for training materials this would be my first bird dog
dirtdodge
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Re: Turkey hunting dogs

Postby dirtdodge » Tue Oct 18, 2016 12:29 am

I've had our curs and laikas tree turkeys a lot. Out squirrel hunting, dog trees and head into them. Only thing in the tree is a turkey or more. Most in a tree was 8. Treed only 1 turkey that had a squirrel in the same tree. A little different from what Andyva was talking about. I never shot 1 out but the dogs just do it. I've wondered if they flushed it up in a tree from the ground or just winded it on the roost.... either way they'll tree a turkey
hillbilly boy
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Re: Turkey hunting dogs

Postby hillbilly boy » Tue Oct 18, 2016 2:53 am

The way the laws are here I don't know if you could shot one when the dog jumps them or you would have to wait until you called it back in

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