Can you use a blue heeler as a hunting dog? A Step-by-Step Guide

What kind of game can Blue Heelers hunt?

Blue Heelers can hunt any variety of small game animals, including but not limited to squirrels, moles, gophers, rabbits, raccoons, and foxes. For hunting birds, they can easily identify and retrieve game birds like quail, ducks, geese, pheasants, and cranes.

There are first-hand accounts of packs of Blue Heelers taking down coyotes and wild boars. However, the risk involved in these encounters is very high. Both wild boars and coyotes are known for their viciousness, so using your Heeler to bring down these animals could be risking their life.

What You Need to Know to Ensure Successful Training

They make wonderful family dogs. As puppies, they are playful, sweet, and willing to learn anything you throw in their direction. As adult dogs, they grow to be among the hardest working animals you will ever encounter. They don’t care how stubborn a sheep or cow is, or how difficult the task. All they care for is that they do their job and make it known that they are there to do something specific.

As a hunting dog, it will deliver the same hard work and results that you expect. It is a dog that loves to work and when they do not have work they can be a handful. I would rather you just keep it busy. Blue Heeler puppies make wonderful additions to any family.

It is a very intelligent, very energetic breed that requires a good bit of love and affection, attention, and positive reinforcement. If you want to make your blue heeler pup a hunting dog, consider the following methods.

What Kind of Game Do Cattle Dogs Hunt?

Cattle Dogs are known to hunt a variety of small game animals including squirrels, moles, gophers, rabbits, foxes, and raccoons. As a bird hunting companion, Cattle Dogs can help identify and retrieve game like pheasant, geese, quail, duck, and sandhill cranes. There are even accounts of a pack of Cattle Dogs bringing down a large wild pig, but strong caution is advised to avoid a hog’s potentially dangerous tusks and powerful jaws.

Can a blue heeler be a hunting dog?

Certain canine breeds, such as setters, Labrador retrievers and pointers, have been bred for centuries to flush and retrieve hunters’ game birds. But I have had scant experience with, nor ever owned, such a breed — until Bubba.

I have visited exclusive wing shooting concessions where I have “hunted over” expensive bird dogs — the kind guests are warned, “If you shoot a dog, you own it.”

Sally and I rescued Bubba, an Australian cattle Dog (a.k.a., blue heeler), from an east Texas puppy mill more than years ago, and I have never been disappointed with his pedigree.

Blue heelers are considered working dogs, associated with ranch operations and the herding of livestock — cattle, horses and sheep. But few would classify the breed as a “bird” dog. Mine is — and much, much more.

I tell people Bubba is the smartest dog I have ever had. Certainly, he is a lot smarter than his owner. Bubba has taught me more than I could ever hope to teach him. And over time, I have learned that he is a better, more enthusiastic hunter than me. He is, to borrow the title of a hunting magazine, a huntin’ fool.

On the farm, Bubba eagerly retrieved squirrels and rabbits for me. Sure, it took a little coaxing, but he inexorably relinquished the critters to me, a little slimy, but no less worse, for the wear. And I always rewarded him for his efforts and obedience. I soon learned he not only was a retriever of fur-bearing critters, he also loved to ‘chase’ circling birds (crows, hawks and vultures), as if he could actually catch them.

When it was dove season, Bubba accompanied me on our west Texas ranch forays, and he quickly developed the knack for locating and retrieving downed doves in thick cover. I usually put his special boots on his paws, for the grass burs and mesquite thorns, and he couldn’t have been a happier camper, hunting with dad.

Bubba also was thrilled to swim out and retrieve ducks I downed over the ranch stock tank. But he was no less eager a retriever of the towering, 3-foot-tall sandhill cranes I knocked down, too. However, with the 15-pound or heavier cranes, I was careful not to allow Bubba to approach wounded birds that might have injured him with their sharp, pointed beaks, wings and inch-and-a-half-long spurs.

On one occasion, toting my Remington 870 over my shoulder to open the gate, I spied a formation of sandhills lining up on approach to an adjacent wheat field, and quickly took a knee on the caleche road. When I stood for a shot, I selected a single bird and let fly with a load of No. 2s. The bird crumpled and plummeted to earth, but as I watched it descend, I noticed a second bird fold and succumb to gravity. Two cranes with one shot — my personal best, yet to be beaten. As ever, Bubba was at my side, and when the ‘double’ fell to earth, he was quickly upon them. One bird, the first I had hit, was dead and was no concern to me insofar as Bubba’s life and limb. The second, however, was alive and kicking and posed a potential threat to my blue heeler, “retriever’s” health.

And if his hunting skills were not enough, Bubba has saved me from numerous rattlesnake encounters.

Bubba may only be a heeler, a working dog of farm and ranch animals, yet he is every bit the pedigree champion retriever, in my book, as an expensive German short hair. On a particular deer hunt in Pecos County, I shot a buck at dark and watched helplessly as it bolted for the cover of west Texas thick brush. Fearing that it might be lost to the night, I got Bubba out of the truck and let him sniff around the shot scene. Without hesitation or training, he picked up the buck’s blood trail and with me in tow, flashlight flickering, led me effortlessly to the downed 10-pointer. Yes, sir, that dog will hunt! Bubba fancies himself a hog-dog, too — but I don’t let him mess with feral hogs, those tusked devils.

Each day, I learn how incredibly smart and resourceful my dog is, and with time I have learned how useful dogs can be, if we properly care for them, and don’t stunt their development with preconceived notions. I think like people, dogs can be put in boxes they should not be assigned to, and suffer for it.

Bubba has his eye on a female heeler owned by church friends, and I hope to extend his lineage soon. Drop me a line if you have a hunting or fishing story you’d like to share: [email protected].