Birds, as a matter of fact, are an absolute necessity in training a bird dog. Oh, yes, there can be a fishing rod with a bird wing for the pup, but that soon ends. So the handler must either have a coop for pigeons, a flight pen for bobwhite, a call-back structure such as a Johnny house for quail, or feed plots. The hunter can also purchase pheasants for training, as well as chukars, but not grouse or prairie chickens. These birds require the trainer to school his dog on the real thing.
Bird dogs are bird intensive.
If you have no training birds, then you will never have a bird dog. Few places today have enough wild quail available for training. And you can't train a bird dog without having the very birds on hand you later want to meet in the wild. You've got to train on the bird you want to hunt. Yes, some bird dogs will sit in your duck blind and fetch your duck.