Stealth Means Better Dog Performance

Scott Linden • January 15, 2025

Elmer Fudd said it best when hunting that wascally wabbit: be vewy, vewy quiet. It’s a good strategy, even if you’re not a cartoon character hunting for Bugs Bunny.

Game birds may not have the acute hearing of a whitetail, but they do have ears, and use them to detect threats – including bird hunters and their dogs. They’re also sneaky and will skulk out from under you and your dog if they see you. So finding birds at all, let alone getting close enough for a shot, depends on how stealthy you and your dog can be. Here are some initial thoughts on the subject of sneakiness.

Worst Offenders

Let’s get the obvious noisemakers outta the way first …

De-clutter his collar: You’d be surprised how noisy a couple collar tags can be. Wrapped in painter’s tape, they still help someone find you when your dog gets lost, but they don’t push birds into the next county. The e-collar beeper may as well be a semi-truck’s air horn, busting birds at even longer distances. Even a grouse dog’s bell is alarming (pardon the pun), so scale it down or remove it.

Go non-verbal: Train a few hand and arm signals. In big country, Flick can see me better than he can hear me. We’ve got a vocabulary of non-verbal cues that get most jobs done: whoa, here, and change direction are the critical ones. A whistle is less human-sounding than your voice, so train a few commands with it, too.

Use the rest of the collar: Modern e-collars have a couple of other capabilities that help you communicate with less noise. Some trainers use the vibrate component to signal “whoa,” for instance, or come here. The “tone” is more intimate than the beeper, and you might overlay another verbal command with it.

Sometimes, though, it’s the subtle things that scare birds into the next county. So let’s work on those.

Telepathy From Training

There’s a mind-meld between you two. You’ve spent hundreds of hours working together, and thousands more communicating in the house. A well-trained dog is in sync with you and knows what you want and where you want to go. He also knows his own job better than you. So unless he goes off the rails, shut up and let him work without commands.

Body language is already part of your shared vocabulary, so take advantage of it. During training, you’ve developed some tells that cue him to what you want … a nod of the head, hand movement, something. Give some thought to those during training, and make notes of the most effective signals. On a hunt, he’s constantly watching you, so leverage that knowledge, and exaggerate if you need to. Facing the direction you want him to go, for instance. He’ll figure it out.

Trust Him

Your dog’s nose is longer, and he has thousands more scent receptors than our puny sniffers do, yet we still think we know best where to go. I’m starting to put more faith in Flick and less in my intuition, reminding myself that “the nose knows.” More often than not, I’ll shut up and let him lead.

Stop and Think

Sure, we want to barge right into the field, because that’s where the birds are. But take a few minutes at the truck to get the lay of the land. It keeps you and your dog from spooking birds as you plow through the crappy cover.

Standing still gives you a chance to look and listen. What is the breeze doing down there in that swale, and how can my dog use it to his advantage? You can hatch a strategy and deploy your dog carefully, minimizing the commands you need to give him.

Rein Him In

Wild birds seldom wait for you to catch up to your dog on point. No matter how steady your dog is, he’s still boring a hole in that covey, and they know it. They’re not going to wait for you to show up – your dog is scaring the heck out of them right now.

There are plenty of times when you might want to bring your dog to heel and sneak into the birdy spots together. Release your dog once you’re both close to the jackpot. You’ll give fewer commands, birds won’t have as much time to freak out, and because you’re closer, you’ll have a better chance to make a shot. Whether or not you hit anything is another story.

Just Think

You don’t have to go all Navy SEAL, but being a little circumspect and controlling some of the variables gives you a strategic advantage over the birds you’re pursuing. You’ll find more birds and get closer to them. You did practice your shooting, right?