Pheasant hunting is a part of the upland hunting category and involves a hunter and dog working together in order to bring down the game, in this case, a pheasant. This dog will flush the pheasant and after the bird has been shot, the dog will retrieve it to the hunter. If you want to train your dog for pheasant hunting, this article will provide the necessary steps and instructions that you need to follow.

First and foremost, you need to start with obedience training which will be the most important part of the entire training process. Every time you take your dog hunting there will be plenty of things that he can get excited about as it is a new place for him and he will want to explore it. A reliable pheasant hunting dog that you can trust must be fully controlled and mindful of your commands. For this reason, you should start with the basic dog obedience commands, like stay, come and sit. Further training will get considerably easier if the dog is capable of doing these basic commands.

Although there are dozens of aids that imitate the action of the real birds out in the hunting field on the market, nothing works just as good as a real bird - so if you want to prepare your dog for a life-like hunting experience, you should use real birds. If by any chance you belong to a hunting preserve, that organization might allocate you a number of birds that you can use for training purposes. In addition, you can also purchase these birds in some cases

Always remember: the primary responsibility of the dog will be to retrieve the game. For this reason, it is highly recommended that you practice every day some ways of retrieving with the dog, either by using one of his favorite toys or a dead bird. Always make sure that the dog will bring the object directly to your hand. Some of the dogs pause just short of their owner due to the fact that they are for a tug of war game. You can put the dog on a long rope if it is necessary in order to use it as guidance for the dog whenever it is stopping short.

It is advisable to train your dog each and every single day. Be careful if you have a young one as they cannot take a lot of training at one time and for this reason you should limit the practice sessions to 20 minutes or so if you notice that the dog becomes anxious or bored. As they get older, you will be able to slowly increase the length of these practice sessions. You need to know that taking the dog out for a walk for about 1-2 hours / day is not enough for when you will be hunting as the dog needs to be in perfect shape otherwise he will last only a limited amount of time out there in the field.

Avoid confusing the dog by giving contradictory commands. For this reason, you should keep a calm head and be direct and clear with the commands. Some recommend letting your dog practice on pigeons before going hunting for real.

If this seems a little bit too overwhelming for you then it means that you should acquire the services of a professional who will take care of the necessary training.