Deuce marked the downed bird and quickly picked it up. Jeff blew his whistle and Deuce trotted to his side and sat down. When Jeff reached out with his hand and gave the command, Deuce released the bird. We repeated this several times and also worked on water retrieves. That sounds simple enough, but it took a lot of work to train Deuce to be a willing retriever.
Dogs are natural predators, and their instinct when they catch a bird is to keep it.
Teaching them to willingly give the bird to their master requires a lot of repetitive training and attention to detail. Brda said many hunters get impatient and try to skip some of the more monotonous parts of the training regimen. It destines them for failure. It's also important to make training fun for the dog. If you are too heavy handed, the dog will dread training and will never reach its full potential.