Offseason training in WMA's

[quijibo]

Is it legal/ethical to train a dog to birds(retriever) in the offseason. I live in an urban environment and I need a place to train a dog(my neighbors Golden) in a real environment without a million other dogs. We have great dog parks, but they hardly have grass much less a clear scent trail.

I wouldn't think of hitting the public areas during the season with an unproven dog. I am wondering if it's okay to bug pheasants and such during their off time.

Adam

[fish2live]

if you look in the hunting law book it tells you, that you can use wma's for training in the off season but, no dogs are allowed i think it is from beginning of april to the mid part of july i think this is because of nesting. you can train on private land anytime. hope this is what you are looking for. just be careful during the time period above so you dog doesn't get into nests.

[gspman]

I think you may need to have your dog on a lead the whole time as well. Better check on that though because I am not 100% certain.

[caseymcq]

This is out of the 2005 MN DNR Hunting Regs, Page 31.

Dog Training

A person may not train hunting dogs afield on DNR administered lands from April 16 to July 14. A person may train hunting dogs afield on other lands. A person training a dog afield and carrying a firearm may only have blank cartridges and shells in possession when the season is not open for any game bird, except by permit. An organization or individual may obtain a free permit to use firearms and live ammunition on domesticated birds or banded game birds from game farms for holding field trials and training hunting dogs.

The only thing I could find in the regs as far as dogs interaction with game referred to big game.

I wouldn't think it would be ethical to have a dog bugging pheasants durring nesting periods.

[quijibo]

Thanks for replying on this, I appreciate your time. This is exactly the info I was looking for. It won't be a problem to work around those dates. Pheasant season ends 1/1/06, so I should have between then and April.

This will work out great since my first project is to try and train my wifes dog(hound) to hunt small game.