In this episode I talk about the new bumper for Gunner kennels. If you have seen them online and wondering how they are, you might want to listen to this show. Thanks for listening everyone and good hunting and training! If you have questions you can contact us at thebirddogpodcast@gmail.com or you can DM us on instagram under the same name. Check our training website out at www.utahbirddogtraining.com. Our breeding websites are www.utahpointinglabs.com and www.fieldbredgoldenretrievers.com.
www.gunner.com you can find info on the bumpers and other products. Reach out to us if you want to buy something and we can help you out with that in getting one to your door. Thanks!
In this episode I talk about the new bumper for Gunner kennels. If you have seen them online and wondering how they are, you might want to listen to this show. Thanks for listening everyone and good hunting and training! If you have questions you can contact us at thebirddogpodcast@gmail.com or you can DM us on instagram under the same name. Check our training website out at www.utahbirddogtraining.com. Our breeding websites are www.utahpointinglabs.com and www.fieldbredgoldenretrievers.com.
www.gunner.com you can find info on the bumpers and other products. Reach out to us if you want to buy something and we can help you out with that in getting one to your door. Thanks!
Hey everyone, welcome to the Bird Dog Podcast. My name is Tice Erickson, I will be your host. And thanks for taking some time to listen to this podcast. And hopefully we'll share a little information with ya. Today they can help you out with your dog, help you out with your training or help you out with your hunting. Uh, in this podcast, we wanted to actually talk about a new product that is out on the market. I've been able to recently handle it and have one and wanted to kind of share with you guys, uh, my opinion. um. pretty cool new product. So, this product is made by Gunner Kennels. many of you may be aware of the Gunner Dog Crate. It's a great, crate and is, Probably one of the best crates out there on the market and they are not cheap, but if you want a kennel that's going to last hopefully your dog's life, whole life and next life and that life and kind of, you know, buy one, cry once type of product, I'd go with the Gunner Kennel. They're pretty, they're a pretty awesome kennel, great company to work with. They're all made in America and you can get some of those cheaper plastic crates. that are at Walmart or at the pet store and they're a hundred, 150, but I think most of the time those are, I don't know if I've ever had any last more than a couple of years. Most of the time they're just a thinner plastic. If it's cold, it gets popped just in the right spot. It's going to break. I've had people sit on them and break them. I've had dogs destroy them. They're just really not worth that. 100, 150 bucks, 60 bucks, so I would recommend saving, putting a little bit on the side and picking up a gunner kennel. They're awesome. Uh, we are also a partner with them cause I want to partner with. The companies out there that produce the best products for you guys. I want to go through the trial period of trialing these kennels out, seeing if they're legit, seeing if different products are what people say they are. And if they are, we're going to go ahead and put them out there for you guys. And so you guys can have confidence that you're buying. The best you can get. Let us do the heavy lifting, figure out if it's good or bad or not, what they say it is. And then, if you're interested or need to need something along those lines, then you can go ahead and pick one of those up and have confidence that it's as good as you're going to get. So. Gunner. com is where you can find, all their different, products. If you're interested in some of their products, reach out to us. We can help you out with those. since we have now recently become a partner with them and we partner with these people because we know they're the best. So, and we're going to continue to partner with other companies that have the best products out there. Corunda dog beds is also, a company that we're affiliated with. If you're interested in getting a dog bed. these are more a dog cot that can, you can go inside your house or inside a run or anything like that. Those are the best dog cots that we've seen on the market. if you go to our training website, Utah bird dog training. And on the bottom, it says Corunda Dog Beds, Q U R A N D A. You click on that and go through that. That helps us out if you go through that link and get a dog bed through them. If you have any questions on what dog beds to get, please reach out to us. Or if you have any questions on... dog kennel sizing, through gunner, please reach out to us and we can help you out. You can reach out to us at the bird dog podcast at gmail. com., and we can help you get a dog crate or kennel or accessories or anything like that, uh, shipped directly to your house, drop ship to your house. So, check them out. In this episode though, let's get on with it. I wanted to talk about the new gunner bumper that they recently have come out with, and they sent one of these over to me to try out and so far. I like it. I'm impressed. When I looked at the bumper online, it looked a little lighter to me. And it is. But I wanted to test it, against my 1 inch Hexagon Avery Tangle Free rubber bumpers that we use a lot just for when we're doing hand throwing. And I did multiple tests where I stood in one place through both bumpers as far as I could and as hard as I could in the same arc and the tangle free bumper I was using I could get it about maybe 10 to 15 feet further than the gunner bumper. but that was what the gunner bumper not weighted at all. The gunner bumper in the inside is pretty cool. They have a cap on one end that In the inside is actually a hollow space and in the very center of the bumper, there's some venting where you can actually stuff, you could stuff whatever you want in there, some rocks or anything like that, some lead weights or anything. If you're just wanting to weight the bumper so you can throw it a little further, it wouldn't take much weight to match any other bumper out there if you care, but it was close enough. That's not a big deal for hand thrown. An extra 10 feet's not that big a deal. So, the space is designed, if you wanted to weight it, but also something that's cool is, they have In that space, you can actually take a bird wing, be a pheasant or a duck or anything like that, and actually put it in the center of the bumper, and then those vents, the dog can actually smell, that. Scent that you have put out there. They call it their, seamless scent training, remove, there's a cap you can fill, remove, and then fill the interior cavity on the bumper. There's no other bumper out that like on the market where you can actually put bird feathers of your choice. inside there to produce, the real scent of the bird that you're going to be hunting. And, you know, there's obviously bird scents on the market, but I think those definitely can help. But you never know, like, are they exactly what a bird smells like or not? And so I think it's cool. You can actually put pheasant wings in there, chukar wings, quail wings. Duck wings, whatever. You got to cut them into little pieces because it's only about an inch and a half wide, but, and then slide those down into there. But I think that's a pretty cool feature that has not, been out on the market. So, talked about weight already. Their size, they are, they are body dimensions 10 point, 10 and a half inches by 2 and a half inches wide, in the center you're about an inch, which causes the dogs, kind of where the feathers are and the venting is, the dogs and. Tend to want to hold the bumper in the center where it kind of take it's about two inches again Two and a half inches on the outside it tapers down to about an inch or so and then Tapers back out to two and a half inches best thing gonna is gonna be to Look on the website and you can check out the the design of the bumpers so something else I liked and I wasn't sure of is actually The rubber handle on the bumper. Most bumpers are just a rope bumper and they, when you go to grab it outta the dog's mouth, if you're going for the rope, the rope hangs down, straight down with gravity kind of underneath the bumpers. You gotta kinda reach down and grab it. Uh, These ropes, they, or they are a little stiffer. they kind of rainbow or stick out to the side of the dog's mouth. So you can easily grab those, grab the handle on it and grab the rope. And I just noticed, Oh, that's actually a pretty, pretty nice little feature. So I thought that was, a pretty cool new handle, in the handle at the top of it, there's kind of a hexagon shape that there's a circle. And I didn't know how that would fill. throwing it, but it actually feels pretty good. So when you grab the handle, the hexagon oval and throw it, I feel like it's no big deal. It just feels natural and no problem. But because that does have a hexagon shape, another added benefit that I like is you can hang that bumper up on a nail or you can hang it up on a hook of some sort, by your training area. And I like that feature. Uh, Most bumpers just have a knot or something like that in the end of the rope. So you got to throw them in a bucket or put them somewhere like that where these you can hang on nails and it just keeps them nice and tidy and clean. Uh, yeah, allows you just to store them nice. And it's not that big a deal. It's not like a hundred percent game changer. But it's just a cool feature. Uh, the texture on the bumper is something I haven't felt. It's kind of a softer foam. and I was, I've wondered how that would hold up and talking to the people over at bumper. They said, Hey dogs, because it is a softer foam on the outside, You will sometimes, if you have a harder mouth dog, you'll maybe see some teeth imprints and stuff like that, but it's designed to kind of absorb those, but still hold its integrity, the bumper, not falling apart and breaking apart. So don't be alarmed if you see. Toothprints in your bumper, which I don't care. Cause it's just, as long as that floats and it doesn't break apart into pieces, that's all I really want ultimately is I want that thing to, to just hold up, I don't care if there's tooth marks in it. I do like the texture of the bumper. Because it is soft, I think dogs are going to enjoy holding it a little more. Um, compared to maybe a rubber bumper, a dog that's teething or something like that, those can be a little more uncomfortable as they get older. It doesn't really matter, but. I do like canvas bumpers just because they tend to be softer. but they just don't seem to hold up as well. And so I like this one. I feel like it's a happy middle ground. It's soft. And so I think the dogs are gonna enjoy it and I think it's going to hold up well. So again, I am still in the earlier stages of using this, but so far it's held up. Great. We'll see. how it's holding up in a year or so of just as much use as we give them. But it seems to be holding up no problem and it's soft and, yeah, I'm excited about it. So the different colors they come in are white, just the traditional white, the flasher, the black and white, and then the orange. So if you're unfamiliar with the colors and why why these bumpers come in these colors, the reason, they're color blind, so just think if you're seeing in the world of black and white, or gray and white, a white bumper, On a darker surface is going to pop a black and white in the sky. It's going to flash black and white so the dog can see that. Then orange is typically a bumper, a color that you don't want the dog to see. So if you want the dog to have a harder time seeing it, you can throw it and they'll see the movement against the sky. But then when it hits on the ground, that's going to pretty much disappear. Or when you're running blind retrieves and you want to really have that dog just utilize its nose. Then go with the orange, but most of the time I would recommend going with, black and white or whites. Those are going to stand out the most. And when you're doing a lot of hand thrown retrieves, you want to let that dog actually see that bumper, see where it goes down. And then when it's in the grass or whatever cover it may be in, they can pull that up and, locate that bird or locate that bumper for you. just a little side note on color selection. As I've been using with the dogs, they seem to naturally want to hold into that center area where the bumper has been designed for the dog to grab. That's right in the venting area in the center of the bumper where the feathers are. And I like that. And the dogs naturally gravitate towards that, that they thought it would. So they've put some, thought into this. a lot of canvas bumpers, there's some companies that'll make canvas bumpers where they'll, zip tie a pheasant or two wings to the outset of the bumper. I'm not a big fan of those. And just because, especially with young dogs, because I feel like a lot of young dogs, what will happen, I've seen it, they'll pin the bumper down and then they'll try to rip the feathers off the canvas bumper. It's very common. They like the feathers. They're like, why is that on there? And they'll just start to try to pull it off and destroy it. And it just gets wet. And nasty and then falling off and it might be okay for the beginning, but I like how the cavity on this gunner bumper is empty. So you can remove it. You can put fresh feathers in there. You can pull out the old ones. The dogs can't get in there to try to. Tear it apart. They can't pin it down and try to tear it apart. but you still have that scenting ability, that we all want. So that's a, cool feature. they seem to float well in the water. when I've thrown them in the water, buoyancy issue, they're nice and buoyant dogs can see them and they do well. this is non weighted bumpers, just their regular bumper and wings obviously are not going to really sink a bumper. Some side note, as I've talked to some of the people at Gunner, the cap you need to push in, there's three stages of where you got to seed the cap into the body. You got to push it all the way in so it sits down and flush. I think it's the third click. You just got to make sure that cap's in there. I think some people have just barely pushed it in and then they've thrown the bumper and then the cap popped out. Which would make sense, but you just got to push it all the way in. And I haven't had any issues of the cap coming dislodged or anything like that. When you do want to get that cap out, you do need to use like a screwdriver to wedged in the edge and pop it up and get that cap pulled up. So that's one thing that So, you know how to remove the cap. You just got to get a little butter knife or a screwdriver is going to probably be your best thing. Slide it in the back of the bumper, open it up, remove it, put your fresh feathers in there, or. You could put whatever scent you want in there and, then close her back up and you're good to go. So, uh, the price point on these, they are more expensive than your typical bumper, but there is also more that goes into them. So instead of just, a full rubber bumper and a rope handle, these have their new foam. It's their technology that they have come up with. It is called the Dura Treev. It's, trademarked by them. It's a proprietary rubber compound designed by Gunner. And, it says the bumper is built to last and ensures reliability. in addition to longevity, the performance material is constructed for ideal weight and floatability in water. it's a new material. It's pretty awesome. I feel like the price point is fair. It's 30 for the bumper. It doesn't matter, what color that you're looking for. But, again, you can find those on gunner. com. Also we're a partner with them. And so if you are interested in getting, Some kennels, accessories, bumpers, reach out to us too. And we can walk you through that and help you out with that also. So, in this podcast again, talk about, this new cool product that's come out again by gunner. com. if you're interested in any of those, feel free to reach out to us. And again, we can help you out with that. shoot us an email at the bird dog podcast at gmail. com or you can DM us on the bird dog podcast on Instagram. And, we'll get back to you guys on that. Also our training website is utahbirddogtraining. com. If you're looking for training help with your dog, or if you're looking for a new. hunting Golden Retriever. You can also find us on the website at field breaded golden retrievers.com and on Instagram at. Field bred golden retrievers on Instagram. So my wife manages that part of the business and is fun to see the young pups going into new homes and, being used out in the field in various areas of work and to see them perform and see our bloodlines continue to kick some butt out there. So And now the hunts are upon us, keep training. Even when it's hunting season, take your dog out, work them. If you're struggling on something, get them out of the field, take them home, work them through it,, get their head in the right, space. And then get them out and put them to work and try it out in the field. hope you all have a great day, good hunting, and we'll see you on the next show.