The sun was halfway below the tree line and although this late summer day was a scorcher, the air had cooled considerably. This was a typical early September evening in southern Wisconsin.

My young dog Peggy and I were sitting some twenty yards off a small pond near a tree line that the Doves roosted in regularly. Peggy had just turned a year old and had never hunted doves before. I thought this might be a great exercise in steadiness if the birds showed up.

We finally got a Dove season in Wisconsin recently I was new to the sport. All my Retrievers are always forced fetched (a retrieving training method used to teach the dog to pick up and hold an object) on several different types of birds including ducks, pheasants, pigeons and quail. The small size of quail gets them ready to retrieve birds such as woodcock and dove. But I never did get a chance to use the small birds during Peggy’s procedure. The smallest bird she had retrieved during training were pigeons, and not many of them.

When the cool evening air brushed my skin and the red winged black birds started singing good night, I new it was time. On queue I started seeing singles arriving early to grab a quick drink of water and a little grit for their gizzard before bedtime. Then some doubles flew in from the fields they had been feeding in.

Peggy just looked at them like tweety birds unaware this was our quarry. They were just out of range zipping around between the trees they soon would commit to.

Anyone who has hunted these birds knows that after the first shot they dive and climb without warning and their wing speed picks up dramatically. I try to swing through the bird and make that first one count because of the difficulty of the next two shots.

I have some dove decoys, but since we scouted the area and new the birds were hear I felt it unnecessary to clip them to the dead tree branches nearby.

I saw a large dove approaching head on for an early rest, I rose from my crouched position and as soon as I covered the bird up with my barrel I shot. The bird fell close but in heavy thick grass. The dog would have to recover it on her own. She saw it fall and seemed steady mostly out of surprise. I released her and she burned past the area of the fall almost immediately. I quickly stopped her on the whistle and called her back saying "fetch it up", "fetch it up". Her nose buried into the grass near where the dove had fallen and after a couple minutes picked her head up and looked at me funny. Like "what, you want me to pick up this little thing?"

After several "fetch it up" commands she finally dug down and grabbed it. She was a little rough on it and I made her hold it the proper way for a few minutes before I took it from her. It’s amazing how small these birds are in our hands versus their size in flight.

Suddenly more doves approached the area. I pulled up on a right to left crossing shot and swung through slightly faster then the bird. I pulled the trigger ahead of the dove on the line of flight and it fell across the pond on a mud flat. I immediately sent Peggy for the retrieve.

After the swim she trudged through ten yards of two foot plus deep mud and arrived at the fall area. She picked up the dove, than spit it out and looked at me. Again I yelled "fetch it up" and finally she got the idea. While returning to me I couldn’t see the dove in her mouth and hoped she hadn’t eaten it. Thankfully she didn’t. Again I made her hold it properly for several minutes before she delivered it to me.

I felt good about my shooting until the next three doves left the area unscathed as I launched nine rounds of number 8 twelve gauge shot at them.

A loner arrived at the pond and swooped in low only a couple feet above the water nearly taking a drink in flight when its wings were stopped by my 1300 fps shot. The dove skipped across the water than settled almost underneath the surface. Barely visible, I sent the dog on a blind retrieve (a retrieve the dog didn’t see fall). It came in so fast and low that Peggy didn’t see the small splash.

She took a good line but past the bird up wind. One cast and she grabbed onto what would be our last bird. She brought it back and delivered it to me perfect. As the evening came to an end I was pleased at the dog’s steadiness as well as her lessons in picking up such a small bird.

Although this hunt went ok, I’m convinced that if I would have used small birds in training, such as quail she would have probably delivered flawlessly. After a couple seasons under her belt she also did well on woodcock. I don’t like training per say while hunting and will remember this could have gone much worse, like failing to retrieve the bird on the mud flat or worse eating it. I won’t make this mistake again.

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