New year, new column. Last year I focused on different coaches around the country, their methods and what I learned from them. This year I wanted to dive headfirst into myself as a coach and my “diehard” mentality, as some would call it.

I should explain that I wanted to write this column because I am going through something that many readers today can relate to when it comes to training methods for hunting dogs. I won’t deny that the idea of ​​”simpler = better” works in some situations, but I have recently come to the realization that this equation does not hold across the board.

Innovation and modernization are real, but there can and should still be a time, place and reason for the “way we used to do things.” Everyone knows there are many ways to train a dog, and I make no secret of the fact that my training style is different than most of what you hear, see or read these days. I have strong opinions on the subject and am sincerely committed to those beliefs. That said, I give you my word that my goal with next year’s column is not to preach or insult, but to point out and share what works well for me and why.

The traditional Christmas

When I was six years old, something happened on Christmas morning that made me a hunter, long before I ever went hunting. My parents hid it behind the door. What I found was everything I had wanted. A link between a toy and the real thing. I still remember it clearly today. It was red, measured 49 inches long when unstrung, and came with a dozen blue and white poplar arrows, tipped with steel and fletched with turkey feathers.

My grandfathers and father were the only “influencers” I knew back then. My grandfather was one of the few bowhunters to take a deer in Wisconsin during the 1947 archery season, and I still have the old Ben Pearson longbow he used to do it. My father hunted with a recurve bow and a quiver full of wooden arrows. Growing up, all I wanted to be was them. With little guidance back then, my father told me, “Don’t shoot anyone” before I left our yard with my bow. No batteries or charging required, no uploading, no software, and no learning or prepping. Just the freedom to explore and become a bowhunter.

Like most new things, it started out awkwardly. Simply drawing an arrow fully and releasing it was difficult. But with practice it got easier and soon I didn’t have to think about these steps anymore. My arrows learned to find their mark by shooting at paper targets attached to hay bales. I learned to get within range of game by hunting chipmunks on piles of firewood stacked high. Those were in simpler times.

Faster or easier is not always better

When I got that little red longbow, bowhunting was undergoing a rapid transformation. The first compound bow came out in 1966 and had nocks as round as a half dollar and barely bigger. These early models were clumsy, but new technology gave bowhunters a more compact and faster tool that could shoot much further distances with greater accuracy.

Around the same time, hunting dog training was undergoing its own revolution with the introduction of remote training collars. They made it easier for trainers to make quicker corrections from a greater distance. Many believed they gave them more control over their animals and the ability to get things done more quickly. They, too, were relatively primitive, but advances in design and function soon followed. By the mid-1980s, most hunting dogs were being trained with the collar and the majority of bowhunters had moved to shooting with “wheel bows.”

Technology is changing hunting

Eventually Dad switched to a compound bow and by the time I turned 14 I had one too. He stuck with his but I felt the need to keep up with the latest and greatest. I adorned mine with rests, sights, stabilizers and more. All of these bells and whistles meant I was spending significantly more money to get “better” and “faster” results. Too often with good intentions we can overcomplicate things. It became so simple; over time I no longer felt the need to spend much time practicing, my enthusiasm waned and I found myself hunting with a bow and arrow less and less.

That’s when I realized that “faster and easier” wasn’t necessarily what I wanted or needed in my life. So I bought a 65-year-old used recurve bow and a dozen Port Orford cedar arrows. Something slow and simple began to reignite my interest. Unlike the six-year-old who just went shooting, the 43-year-old did more research and practiced a lot more. With relatively unlimited, easily accessible information, I listened to hours of interviews with famous traditional bowhunters who had tons of experience and knowledge. Many were humble, unpretentious, and downright inspiring. Others boasted, insisted on belittling those who didn’t use traditional gear, and were quick to claim to be the “better” hunters.

The difference in the way the two types of instructors delivered information made all the difference for me. It got me thinking very hard about my own beliefs as a dog trainer. I have never used an e-collar for training, nor do I plan to in the future, and I have not been shy in the past about sharing this with you. It is at about this point that a younger me would get on the soapbox and launch into an explanation of why I don’t train my dogs with an e-collar. But today, the slower, older me, after listening to these traditional bowhunters whose egos overpowered every good thing their message had to offer, will try not to make that mistake.

Addressing technological changes in dog training

It is not easy to admit one’s weaknesses and I have many of them. I confess that my own impatience and my inability to always control my temper well are partly reasons why I do not use a collar. I should also make it clearer that I have no problem with the way many trainers use them today. I am against them being abused and used incorrectly in a way that is unfair to the dogs and if someone feels insulted by such a statement then they are the one who needed to hear it the most. My setter rarely sees a control leash, I think that retrievers can be trained to a high level without “forcing” anything and I do not believe in “breaking” dogs. To those who say that training with these techniques makes things go faster, I can agree and have seen it myself sometimes. But remember and never forget that the time we spend with our dogs is a gift and not a burden. The time we spend with them is something we could all get more out of; if we all slowed down and remembered to enjoy it. Changing someone’s mind is not easy, and telling someone how or what to do or not to do almost never works. Yet it seems to come more easily and naturally to many, myself included. It is a common tendency to highlight the negative aspects of the other side rather than the positive aspects of the alternative. That will be part of my challenge as I write these columns in the future. What you do with the message, or whether you even go that far, is entirely up to you.

I’m not against technology, outdoors or otherwise, but we need to be honest and treat it for what it is: a balancing act. I want to make sure our children don’t grow up believing that you can only track and classify deer with live feed cameras, that you can only shoot them by clicking on rangefinders connected to Bluetooth sights, and that you can only retrieve game with thermal imaging drones. Likewise, I don’t want innovation to stop in dog training, but I also don’t want to see a generation that can’t hunt or train their dogs when the batteries die or they don’t have good reception. I believe the importance of a connection between the dog and the human spirit must not be forgotten.

Maybe I shouldn’t admit in a magazine like this, which is aimed at owners of hunting dogs, that it’s not just hunting that’s important to me. That there’s much more to it than that. That when training dogs, the means are always more important than the end. Every dog ​​knows that, and their trainers should know that too.