Learning lessons from our mistakes is a hard way to gain real-world experience, but those are the kinds of lessons that stick with us for life.
Kenny Shiyou and Bubba Bennett have made more dog-hunting mistakes than they care to admit, but they both recognize that the lessons they’ve learned from those mistakes have proven invaluable.
Here are a couple things they’ve learned the hard way over the years:
• Don’t dismiss a single dog
Every now and then, Shiyou would notice that one of the dogs in a pack that was already trailing a deer would split off from the pack. After dismissing that single dog a few times, he soon discovered that some dogs just seem predisposed to follow bucks, and those are the ones that are likely to split from a group to stay on the trail.
“I pay attention to that single dog now,” Shiyou admitted. “A dog that peels off, he’s going somewhere for a reason. If he crosses a road and nobody saw him, I’m going to check him out.”
• Patience is a virtue
Bennett used to get all pumped up and want to hurry up and move form one block to another or one stand to another. However, he was eventually burned too many times by being antsy that he eventually leaned how to be patient with a good stand.
“When you don’t have many people hunting, at times you want to run over there right quick to help on that side,” Bennett noted. “And wouldn’t you know it, as soon as you want to run over to another spot real quick — whoosh — he’s going to cross right where you just moved from.”
• Don’t leave after letting dogs go
Bennett has had more than one opportunity to learn a lesson that he’s been taught since he was a kid but just didn’t seem to stick.
“My dad taught me when he would turn a dog loose on a track to not leave that spot,” he recalled. What happens a lot of times when the dogs jump a buck he runs straight back down the trail they just went in on. He doesn’t know those dogs are on his trail just yet, and he’ll cross back right where you just let those dogs out.”
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