Hunting with laikas
1.
Hunting elks (see photos 1
2 3)
Hunting elks with laikas is of great
interest nowadays, as in most forests you could find nothing but elks. You can object: the hunting season is
very short, licenses are very expensive and hard to receive.. All that is
true, but if you succeed in training your dog for such a hunt, be sure, you
(or, to put it right, your dog) will be welcomed and wanted each day of the
hunting season. Every team that have got a license will be happy to use it
at once using your dog instead of running through the forest during the
whole winter. How can you prepare your dog for such a hunting? It is worth
beginning with finding a suitable hunting grounds and make arrangements
with the game warden on friendship, cooperation and laika training. Simple
“lubricating” won’t do, the main thing is to “solicit” your help, i.e. help
to carry salt and crops, to make feed-troughs and feed mangers, swamping
and clearing, pushing out poachers and so on. This will give you a
possibility to accompany the warden all year round, and he will tell you
when you can take the dog to the forest. In general make it a rule not to
go to the hunting grounds with the dog without letting the warden know,
this can help you avoid difficult situations. Sooner or later the dog will
come across its first elk. A dog cannot hurt healthy elks, excluding
new-born calves, and in May and in June you shouldn’t go to the places
where you can meet them. At a speed of 65 km per hour an elk can easily
leave the dogs behind and run away. We noticed, that a dog is able to set
an elk in the next cases:
The dog works at an elk “gently”, that is, it doesn’t jump, doesn’t
try to catch it by the leg, but barks at the animal comfortably from a big
distance. A dog working gently approaches the elk and intensifies barking
only when it begins moving out. When the elk stops, the dog steps away and
pretends hunting mice, and goes on alternating barking with silence. We
noticed that only a calm dog (typical sanguine)works like this, making hunt
beautiful and fascinating A pushy dog (choleric) always makes elks run
(elks are cowardly and simply begin running if a dog is pushy) and can be
used only for driving game.
Work at a single
bull elk. It seems especially fascinating if such an elk has estrus, and it
attacks the dogs or simply stands at bay.
The dog works at a cow with two or three calves. The calves are
afraid of the dog and cling to the cow, and the latter as a rule stays
among fir trees waiting for a better time. It is worth training a young dog
to work at a cow with calves, let it get trained. Come at a shot distance,
clap your hands, and the cow with the calves will move some distance away
and stand again. Repeat this several times. I believe you shouldn’t shoot
at a cow nor at a calf (that may be female), as there are plenty of bulls,
and they are enough for hunting with a good dog. It is next to impossible to
prevent a dog from working at cows. If there is a herd of elks the dog
instinctively follow the strongest smell and works at a bull, and if there
is no bull, it works at the strongest cow. But repeated trainings helps to
make the dog less tenacious to cows (and to elks in general), so that it
could be taken away by commands in some 15 to 20 minutes. This can be
achieved in a simple way. When you see that your dog is working at cows,
you walk away and when at a distance give a command “come” with the whistle
and continue to walk away. Begin with 3 to 4 hours and in a year of
training you will come to some 15 to 20 minutes. It refers to sanguine
dogs, as for cholerics, they wouldn’t stop for several days, so it is for
you to decide what dog you will choose. For example, the Finns hunts for
several weeks and get much more elks then we do, but they have a great deal
of satellite navigation and motor vehicles and, the main thing, a developed
net of roads that gives a possibility to find the dog and the game quickly.
Our windbreakages are much more wild and backwoods, there are no good
roads, mere directions like clearances, and thus we prefer sanguine dogs.
Deep crusted snow.
It’s clear, that when an elk is “creeping” and it can hurt its legs, it
would not run without serious reasons.
Unscared elks. In
quiet wild corners elks don’t pay attention to dogs nor to people and graze
on the fields together with farmers’ cows.
Ill or fatigued
elk. We met crippled invalids, grey old beasts, bulls exhausted by mating
battles, poor creatures tangled in barbed wire, etc..
2.
Hunting boars (.see photo)
3.
Hunting bears
4.
Hunting squirrels and íà áåëêó è êóíèöó
5.
Hunting wood grouse
6.
Hunting ducks
