training scent

[toontastic]

Does anybody use bottled scent on their dummies when training. If so is there a particular brand that can be recommended and a place to purchase it.

 

Cheers

Edited August 13, 2016 by toontastic

[Old farrier]

Not used that

 

I do put the new dummies in my game bag and fire the starting pistol inside the bag a few times before I use them

 

All the best

Of

[WGD]

No, it's unnecessary IMO.

[simjakcal]

Rub it under your arm pit or spit on it !

[ditchman]

knew one trainer who started off his dogs on scent...with an orange and a piece of cheese in an old sock..................which taught them very quickly what to hunt for...then went to partridge and pheasant after they had the hang of hunting.........

[pontbeck]

No, it's unnecessary IMO.

+1

[UKPoacher]

knew one trainer who started off his dogs on scent...with an orange and a piece of cheese in an old sock..................which taught them very quickly what to hunt for...then went to partridge and pheasant after they had the hang of hunting.........

 

Years ago Dutch police dog handlers did some very interesting experiments with scent for their tracking dogs. One of them involved rinsing a well used item of clothing such as a vest or T-shirt and then putting the water in a spray bottle so the track layer could spray the ground every so often to encourage the dogs to track on hard surfaces such as tarmac. The idea was to get young inexperienced dogs to track more confidently on difficult surfaces. Then a few years later, quite by accident a Dutch dog handler went to a city centre burglary where there was absolutely no chance of the dog picking up a track but it did. The dog picked up hand scent on a door handle and followed the track through a crowd of people, along several streets and to the door of a known burglar. The property stolen was discovered in the house. That turned the whole theory about scent on its head and now, after many experiments and practical tests they have realised that a) dogs aren't as daft as we thought and b) just the tiniest smidgen of scent is enough for the dog to lock onto a track or indicate on a search.

 

Putting this in context; Any training dummy carried in a game bag will pick up game scent from the bag. But it doesn't really matter as the dog is capable of picking up the scent of a training dummy just as easily as the scent of a game bird. And it will happily retrieve either. I used to throw plastic pigeon decoys into hedgerows and then go back two or three days later and the dog would always find them.

Edited August 20, 2016 by UKPoacher