That's one way to do it . I would rather let the puppy find a bird, flush it, then shoot over him. It's an association they make gunshot = birds. When I'm hunting with her, when we hear a gunshot she immediately wants to know what they got.

Update on the puppy training: My puppy seems to be getting 'it'. On leash that is. She knows 'woah' + 'heel' real well. After her run, I will do alittle trainning session everyday until she gets it. Today, I did something a bit different. I heeled her then walked 20 feet then blew my whistle once for whoa. (I can use both verbal or whistle commands). Then walk backwards for 20' then blew two hoots to come. Did that several times, back and forth LOL my pup prolly thought I was dingy that day.

PA Gobbler, how's the training going? You should start seeing results by now. Looks like the puppy's hunting instinct is comming along just fine.

I've also heard of a command I haven't the faintest clue in how to train the dog in. A guy with two EP's told me that he uses mutiple hoots to get the dog to circle the bird. That's a really neat trick because the pheasants here will run alot. I have no idea how he trained them to do that.