Non traditional birds for training?

[fabsroman]

I used crows to train Nitro the first year I got him. He was retrieving them at 4 and 5 months old. Set up the caller and started shooting. For a portion of the time I let my dad be the only shooter while I worked with Nitro. Can't wait until my kids are older and I can get back to some more serious hunting and dog training.

One of the prior members on here, the name of which escapes me right now, warned me against using crows because they are essentially raptors with hooked beaks that could poke out Nitro's eye. Nitro might have even gotten poked by one, because I saw him shake the stuffing out of one of them. Needless to say, he still has both eyes and we have shot crows a couple more times after that.