After my first dog developed his first case of deer fever and many deer flushes later I reluctantly bought my first shock collar. It helped although he still like to get on a trail every now and then but now that he's older we simply only need to remind him with our voices or the whistle.

Have two real stories here:
1) When I was in 8th grade my dad and I were out quail hunting a brushy creek about 2 weeks after deer season and my dog goes on point (this sounds bad but when there's no bird finding going on he likes to chase fur out of boredom. I'm on the edge and my dad goes in to flush. He's kickin' and kickin' and no birds are coming out of the chest high grass. All of a sudden a coyote jumps out no more than 5 ft from my dad and comes out into the field on my side. I noticed that he had a huge huge portion of his left flank missing (a deer hunter must have grazed it with a slug) and since he was running so slow I decided to pop him b/c my dog would have caught up to him. Well I hit him in the stomach and knocked him down well enough that he couldn't get up. My dog runs over there and starts attacking the yote...blah blah blah. We finally get my dog off the yote and dispatch it.

2) My dad, uncle and I were quail hunting on my uncle's co-workers ground. The co-worker and his son (no more than 8 years old) came along but weren't hunting. We got into some birds but then it tapered off. Saw my older dog (have two dogs at this point) go on point in front of 3 old round bales in the middle of a field. I thought this was pretty odd and knowing my dog, knew this was instant trouble. Anyways, I kick around and nothing flys so i'm thinking a yote had been bedded there and ran off when he heard the bells. All of a sudden my oldest dog dives under one of the bails and I hear a growling (not coming from dog). Immediately I'm thinking, great it's a coon. He was half way under the bale and my dad grabbed him by his rear and pulls out my dog with about an 18lb coon in his mouth!! So those two go at for a bit with the younger dog on the other side of the bales just watching (he's wuss and didn't want any part of the fight). All the while we're standing there watching.....can't really do anything in a situation like that.....and I look back and the little kid is holding on to his dad's leg in fright (pretty funny actually!!!) Eventually my dog and the coon had enough of each other and the coon runs off. I should note that my dog only suffered a small bite mark on top of his shoulders (could've been much worse).

These stories make my oldest dog sound like more of a fur hunter than a feather hunter but in all honesty he has/had the best the nose of any dog I've hunted with (and I've hunted with quite a few). All in all, the oldest dog is just a bull headed jacka$$ at times! LOL