The American Beagler Forum

If your dogs runs a grouse or a pheasant do you consider it trash? I have a female that has bumped grouse in the past. I just considered it a bonus to a good day on the field. Earlier this year I took a trip to a friends camp in pennsylvania. My young male went crazy over the pheasants pa stocks in their game lands. We ended up killing 8 and he retrieved all but one (He won't pick up a rabbit". I don't see it as a bad thing I just wanted to hear some different opinions.

Anything other than a rabbit is considered trash in my opinion, unless you want your dogs to be versitile.

they are your dogs ,, but alot of folks wouoldnt want to run with ya if your dogs were doing that .

from a hunting standpoint I say no. However, in LP trials it is a minus, and a DQ in Progressive Pack. Not sure about the other formats. Back in the 50's and early 60's as a kid in s/e Michigan , the big deal was pheasant hunting. Our primary pheasant dogs were beagles. Our beagles were used for rabbits only to have something to do when pheasant season ended. My dad had an old Cocker Spaniel / beagle mix named Scamp , who would run hen pheasant's silent , and only opened on the roosters.

if hunting dogs no if trial dogs yes. i enjoy a mixed bag but we dont have enough birds for this to be a problem.

IMO, anything other than a rabbit is trash.

In my opinion anything but a rabbit is trash. However if it doesn't bother you than don't worry about what the rest of us think. To most a squirrel is trash but I knew an old man once who said he loved the fact that his beagle would pop off on a squirrel around a field edge. He said he killed alot of squirrels watching that dog and to him it was the best rabbit dog he owned.

I dont like it at all and I'm mostly a gunner, the thing is that the dogs don't normally find pheasant up here in N.E Ohio so it makes it hard to break them in the field.

A running buddy and I went to a public area on opening day and the state had just released a crap load of birds. These birds wanted to run and not fly and it made for a frustrating day. Most of the dogs had never seen or messed with birds of any kind but we must have turned out at a major release point, they would start and push the thing like a rabbit and 5 minutes later the dang thing would flush. A couple of times I would hear them cackle as they were running and I would lite-em up but still frustrated the crap out of me.

I used to raise 75-100 pheasants a year for training my bird dogs...I guess I'll have to get a few and use them for breaking the dogs.

We don't have native pheasants where we hunt but quite often bump quail and snipe. I do not allow anyone to shoot squirrels, birds or anything else except rabbit in front of our dogs. I do not want them to run anything but a rabbit but that is my preference and I do not judge any other man's dog, Bobby