Something to Think About….

I’ve been down that sad road with blown CCLs in my spayed German Wirehair. Dogs play a big part in the life of bird hunters and become part of our families. It is time to reconsider neutering, even though some of the veterinarians are dragging their feet….

http://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/three-reasons-to-reconsider-spayneuter/

Juno Points Her First Quail

The recall house loaded with Quail

Sometimes the best lessons aren’t planned. After work today I took the dogs out for a walk. It had been a week of awful weather, so little time had been spent working the girls. Juno, our seven month old GSP pup, bolted out back past the barn. Her new joy in life has been the quail recall house that I loaded with quail a little over a week ago. The older and wiser wirehairs trotted along with me.

By the time I reached the barn Juno was racing about stacks of new bricks on pallets. I thought there might still be a quail out, but it had been a week of bitter wintery weather since I had released any. Juno squeezed between two pallets of bricks and stuck her nose in a hole left for a forklift. I looked in the other end and, sure enough, there was a quail hiding inside the pile of bricks.

I got Juno off the scent and we walked out back into the fields and woods. Returning, the dogs bolted ahead to the quail house and hunted the area hard.

Chara, our wise old German wirehair who’s turning thirteen in June, shuffled about with her nose to the ground, plowing through leaves beneath stunted white oaks. The two younger dogs were like ping pong balls, all over the place. Chara locked up on point thirty feet from the recall house.

Colby, my five year old wire, noticed and faithfully honored. I could see the quail hunkered down about three yards from Chara’s nose.

Juno ricocheted all over the place, twice passing close, but tuned into her own little world. I so wished she dragged a line so I might control her. The two wires trembled, but didn’t budge. Juno finally bounded toward the older girls and then stopped like a statue right against Chara’s side. Her head was up as she inhaled the bird’s heady scent.

I praised her and stroked her shoulders, and then took two steps toward the quail.

The bird bolted as if shot from a canon, with Juno hot on its tail.

Pandemonium

Four year old Colby honoring Chara.'s point.

Now I have a confession to make, I enjoy hunting with a pile of dogs. I know, it makes little sense. It’s difficult to keep track of them and there are only so many birds to find. I run two a lot, three sometimes, and even have done four fairly often. In the thick grouse woods, four is over the top and I can’t hope to keep track of them by myself.

Three bells ringing is all that I can hope keep track of, and you had better not be distracting me. So far I have resisted the beeper collars.

Twelve year old Chara backing Colby.

What man’s heart doesn’t skip a beat when two or three dogs are all locked up on point simultaneously? And if one bell falls silent and I’m a little vague on where I heard it last, I guide another dog, or dogs, in the general direction of where the missing bell last sang. In short order they always finds the missing dog pointing.

My oldest wirehair, Chara, walks along sorting out scent, never in a hurry at this stage of her life. The younger dogs race about, particularly the youngest, Georgia the German shorthair, all of them covering many times the ground. Yet Chara points as many grouse as either of the youngsters, often in areas that they have barreled right through. What’s the story of the tortoise and the hare…slow and steady wins the race?

Of course Georgia may find a bird sixty yards away that Chara never would have found. That’s reason enough for me to keep up the insanity.

Can you find the third dog pointing that grouse??

Georgia, the story continues…

Room to run in the big woods.

At a little over two and a half years of age, it was Georgia’s third foray up to the big north woods with me. Her owners, both non-hunters, loved that their shorthair got the chance to experience “what she was bred for”.

Her first year she just tagged along, playing as much as hunting and learning what life is all about. Ruffed grouse baffled her, but occasionally a woodcock would hold for a point. The second season it all started to come together, and during the second week of that trip she pointed her first ruffed grouse. There were more points that week, as it all started to come together, but also periods of over-exuberance (read: unruly flushing of grouse, most far enough away that they could be heard but not seen).  And then this fall, after a couple of rather rowdy days burning off steam, she settled down and hunted like a champ, pointing over a dozen grouse, politely honoring on still more than that, and doing both on countless woodcock.

Georgia with a bird pinned.

In her puppy days, Georgia had been taught the basic manners that all dogs should be taught, but since then has had almost no training in hunting. Before taking her north for the second season, we did a little work on planted pigeons and stalked a few pheasants that the state of Massachusetts had nicely provided, but I doubt there was five hours of training all together.

Before heading north this year I took her out into the fields behind the house to find pigeons that I’d planted, and she solidly pointed every single one of them. Georgia did it with such regularity that it was almost boring to work with her. Again, we only trained a few of hours, total.

Three tired dogs.

Her breeders, Hedgehog Hill Shorthairs in Belmont, Vermont, did a spectacular job of breeding for temperament balanced with hunting skills. Georgia was so well mannered this year that I’ve told people it was as if she knew she was a guest and wouldn’t be invited back again if she misbehaved. It was a pleasure to have her in the house as well as on the hunt.

We won’t get north again this season, so now it’s the waiting, but it’s only three hundred and twenty days until it’s October again! I think Georgia has the days marked on a calendar in her kennel.

Hot Weather

It has been really hot, so hot that when I am outside there seems to be bacon sizzling somewhere. At least my mind hears it, if only my nose could find the aroma.

Early morning walks, out back behind the house, are still possible, but by eight o’clock the woodland strolls are out of the question. They are not fun for me and the dogs suffer in the heat. Back at the house the dogs dig for cool soil to lay on, and I can’t blame them, but we try very hard to discourage it. Parts of the yard are starting to look like the No Man’s Land of World War I, all pot holes and bones. Taking the dogs down to one of the ponds is tempting and sometimes we get there, but other times the dogs and I just hunker down.

If I can avoid the persistent chores on the “to-do list” I’ll read, which is easily my favorite pastime in hot weather. Find me shade and a good book and I’m quite content while I wait for fall.

I just re-read Gene Hill’s book Shotgunner’s Notebook and enjoyed it immensely. I’m not sure if I learned anything new, but it brought a lot of things back that maybe had been filed in the foggy recesses of my brain. Some of the reviews of that book haven’t been the kindest because it was different than his other books, but you can still hear Gene’s voice and read his humor, plus learn something along the way.

I’ll have to rout around my bookshelves now to find something else to read. Or, while it’s really hot, it might be a good time to take my guns out, haul them down to my workbench in the cool basement, and give them a good cleaning, at least until the sun goes down.

Georgia

     I’ve always started working with my bird dog pups the day that I brought them home from the breeder. It is never too early to expose them to feathers and birds, as long as you don’t scare the pup and keep it fun, that’s the way I feel anyway. By the time they are a few months old they are always pointing quail or pigeons and well on their way to becoming bird dogs. Without birds you can’t have a bird dog—I think we’ve all heard that.

     So this story is about a dog that friends of ours, who are non-hunters, acquired about a year and a half ago, a German shorthair pointer named Georgia. This couple has always had shorthairs, and I think this was their third. The idea of their dogs doing what it was been bred to do has always appealed to them, and one day two summers ago I asked how old the pup would be come last October. It would be six months old that fall they said and I jokingly mentioned I’d love to take her up hunting with me. Luckily for me, they thought the idea of the dog traveling up to bird country sounded like a great idea.

     Or maybe they just needed a break from the pup’s energy!

     Georgia had been well taught her basic manners, came when called, sat, stayed, and was a pleasure to be around. Of course there was lots of energy there, and keeping her sitting or staying sometimes became an issue, but, all in all, she was great for a young dog. Her manners around other dogs were impeccable, never once trying to force things to have her own way.

     So we headed up to the big woods for a couple of weeks, with Chara, my oldest German wirehair, and Colby, the young wire who was having hind leg issues that year. Georgia loved it up there, bumped some partridge right of the bat, and explored the new woods with its new and wild scents. The other dogs tolerated her or ignored her, often acting as if she were invisible. Sometimes Georgia stayed in the kennel in the back of the truck so the other dogs could hunt without her bumping the birds.

Georgia on an early woodcock.

     And then we went to the biggest alder patch that I know, where woodcock always are present and sometimes very abundant. Right off the bat Colby pointed a woodcock with Chara and Georgia both honoring. Georgia bumped a couple, and then pointed one. I made very sure that I killed that one on the flush. She was starting to see how things are supposed to work.

     The day turned out to be sort of controlled craziness, with dogs pointing and honoring and bumped birds flying all over the place, but Georgia learned a lot and learned it fast. I don’t know how many woodcock we moved, but there certainly were dozens.

     This past fall we headed north again, Chara another year older and starting to show it, Colby a year wiser and in better physical shape than the year before, and Georgia, anxious to go hunting, but with no additional real training on birds.

Grouse country.

     And what a year! Grouse seemed to be just about everywhere and I lost count of how  many were pointed. Georgia would lock up like a statue though and then take off like a rocket, determined to catch the birds. The other dogs ignored her bad manners and when they pointed I tried to hurry in before Georgia would notice them. When she spotted another dog pointing she would honor for a moment before storming in with the predictable and disastrous results. On woodcock she did fine, but those nervous grouse were just too tantalizing to not chase. Each of the dogs spent time in the kennel, and Georgia was forced to sit out some great grouse cover.

     And then one day, when all three of the three dogs and I worked down through a clear cut that I had never hunted before, it all clicked in. While Chara tried to relocate a grouse that had flushed off to my right, Georgia locked up solid on another bird ahead and stayed that way. What a sight!

Yeah, that's what it is all about!

     It happened in a thicket that all but swallowed up the dogs, where their bells went silent and I could barely catch a glimpse of Colby’s rump as she honored Georgia’s point ahead of her. Georgia, with her darker color, was almost impossible to see. The bird flashed up through the fir boughs and I fired as it disappeared. Both dogs vanished into the foliage and I feared a miss, but then Colby came pushing out of the greenery carrying the bird with Georgia following close behind.

     I took some time to praise them both, which they definitely deserved. They each looked cocky as hell and anxious to hunt more.

Georgia looking proud.

     After that Georgia pointed nearly as many grouse as either of the older dogs. Most of what she knows is in her genes and not from anybody’s training, so it’s kudos to the breeder, Hedgehog Hill Shorthairs in Belmont, Vermont. Of course she is smart too, which lets her figure things out quickly, like how to grab that unattended last half of a sandwich from the tailgate of the truck.

     I’ll hunt over that dog anytime. I keep finding myself singing that Ray Charles song…Georgia on my mind.

   

Bear?

     We were about twelve miles in the woods, two from where we parked the truck, trying to find our way to a particular lake using old logging roads and snowmobile trails. The three dogs were with us, Chara, the oldest German wirehaired pointer not far ahead, Colby, our youngster GWP maybe a hundred yards ahead, and Bella, our crazy Vizsla somewhere between the two. The dogs knew we weren’t hunting but hiking, so mostly they stayed on the trail and only made short forays into the trees.

     After walking almost an hour over a ridge on hot sunny logging roads, we had dropped down into a valley, following a narrow trail through thick hardwoods with a lot of dense understory. Near a stream, Chara trotted off to the left and stopped twenty feet from the path, so I stopped too, thinking grouse.

     Bella noticed Chara stopped, and her usual routine is to bolt toward Chara but then to circle around to pin the bird between the two of them. But instead she stopped almost beside Chara, with the two of them staring into the woods, not in what I would call a bird dog’s point, but with heads held high as if trying to see.

     And then about thirty feet beyond the dogs the bushes shook and something large moved. My first thought was “deer”, because that is what it would have been back home. But I didn’t see a deer and the critter only moved a few feet, what I did catch a glimpse of was something dark, and then I lost sight of it among the leaves. Whatever it was, it had stopped only fifty feet from our dogs.

     Both Sally and I could hear something like an infant moaning not far away. The two dogs never moved. Colby came trotting back and I stopped her with a “whoa”. 

Calling the dogs to come with us, we hurried on our way. 

     My best guess is a bear with a young one. 

July Rabbits

Pointing rabbits early last spring

     My dogs are German wirehaired pointers, and we also have a Vizsla in the house, and in Europe they are all breed to hunt furred as well as feathered game. In North America, the hunting of furred game is usually discouraged, and that is what I have done.

     But come July, when hunting is a distant memory in the dog’s mind, and the year’s new crop has bunnies everywhere around our home, I let them have some fun with the rabbits.

     On our morning and afternoon walks they always find one to point, sometimes a whole bunch to point. I walk in and then shout “okay”, which causes the dogs to dash after the rabbit. The dogs have learned to hunt as a team, with one usually trying to come around to cut off any escape route. They seem to have great fun and it causes me to laugh. Only a couple of times have they actually caught the rabbits.

     If they start to point when I’m in a hurry to be going, I shout “leave it”, and they do, but appear to do so with great reluctance. In bird season they would have to be dragged by a bulldozer to get them off a bird they are pointing. They know when it’s serious business.

     Dogs sure are fun. 

During the off season…

     I find myself daydreaming a lot this time of the year, counting the days until October.  Not too long ago I discovered a great app for my smart phone.  My phone is a Android, but I’m sure it’s available for iPhones too, and there’s probably other apps that do similar things.  It’s called BackCountry Navigator, and it basically turns your phone into a standalone GPS.  No phone coverage is needed, so it works out in the middle of nowhere, which is one of my favorite places to be.

My girls, showing off again.

     USGS type topographical maps are available from MyTopo.com, or, better yet, USGS Color Aerials are available too.  Downloading them on the phone is painless and takes almost no time.  Now, whenever I find myself waiting, whether it’s for an oil change or lunch at the diner, I go to my favorite coverts in the palm of my hand. Or better yet, I search the color aerial photos looking for likely new coverts. Technology, you have to love it.

     It’s not a free app and I don’t remember what I paid, but, being a New England Yankee, you can be sure it wasn’t too much.  Whatever it was, it certainly was worth every penny for all the hours it has entertained 

My older wirehair, when she was just a pup.

Doggedly

     Watching my dog work foot scent of a pheasant yesterday, I realized where the term doggedly comes from.  Dogs don't quit. 

     The pheasant ran inside thick brushy undercover beneath stunted twenty-foot oaks, traveling fast.  Chara pushed under or jumped over tangles with almost every step.  My legs ached trying to follow and the oaks clawed at my clothes.

     We were hunting in a wildlife management area where hunters earlier chased all the pheasants out of the fields and into surrounding woods.  The land is lumpy, not real hills but rather rolling crevasses, some twenty feet deep. 

     Repeatedly Chara pointed and I did my best to rush ahead, only to find no bird.  Then she would take off again, nose to the ground, trying to sort out the scent.  Twice I caught glimpses of the bird before it disappeared into the brush, encouragement enough to keep me chugging on. 

     We came to an open tote road and Chara locked up solid about thirty feet from its edge.  My spirits soared, thinking we might finally have the pheasant cornered.  I dashed ahead to the road and pushed back into the mess toward the dog, hoping for a flush.

     Twenty feet to my left I spotted the pheasant, crouched low and long like a torpedo, dashing back up the hill, staying low to the ground beneath the tangled brush, and then it disappeared over the crest.

     I called Chara to heel and we left for the truck, already twenty minutes past when I promised myself we would leave for an appointment.  Chara came along, but with protest in her eyes. 

       

Skunks

We live on an island of Martha’s Vineyard, where once upon a time skunks never existed.  Many many years ago, some evil-minded person released a pair, and who that was has long been the subject of much speculation.  And now, because we have no earth-cleansing predators other than hawks or owls to keep their numbers down, the skunks are quite abundant and live very happily.

By abundant I mean you never drive to town without seeing a few dead in the road along the way.  A friend, who once raised chickens, used to trap almost one a day, and he wasn’t releasing them alive so none were caught twice.  The skunks almost roto-till lawns looking for grubs.  Ground nesting birds like quail, whippoorwills, and some of the shore birds have all but disappeared.  Every dog owner has a tale to tell and most have a bottle of Skunk Off or other balm handy all the time.  More than once I have heard stories about people finding the skunks walking around inside their homes, coming in through either through a dog door or a sliding door left ajar.

Our older dogs received the wrath of skunks a few times when they were young, but along the way learned it wasn’t fun and have since then gone out of their way to avoid the black demon with the white racing stripe.  Our youngest was only sprayed lightly once and then fell in with the older dogs, steering clear of the stinky little creatures.  Now they loosely point skunks from a safe distance, heads held high with their noses moving slowly side to side, I guess to alert the rest of us to the critter’s position.

There are dogs that attack every skunk they see, and why some do and others avoid them I will never know.  I am just thankful that ours have decided they like smelling like dogs.

Aging

My oldest German wirehair, Chara, was ten this past summer.  When I stroke her whiskers back I notice cloudiness in her eyes that wasn’t there before.  Her spirit is still strong, maybe stronger than mine, but she is quite content to curl up on a rug and wait for something to happen.  Yet on walks she still hunts for mice and points song birds for her own entertainment, and physically she is muscular and strong.    She still runs for the back door, excited as a young pup, at the sound of the bell on her hunting collar. 

           Chara’s colors are white and liver, so the new white hairs aren’t as noticeable as if she were darker, but I do see white flecks where solid liver used to be.  Aging catches us all.

            Inside her head are ten seasons of experience, starting with her first season when she pointed quail at five months of age.  I don’t remember if she retrieved them, but I know I killed quail over her points that first fall.  The following season we hunted woodcock and ruffed grouse, and I can remember every detail of her first wild bird, a woodcock shot in Randolph, New Hampshire, at the end of a very long day afield.

            I remember her first duck hunt and how she retrieved a mallard as if she’d done it a hundred times before.  And the first pheasant she pointed, in a field of low cut grass, where I was so convinced that she was false pointing that I never even raised my gun when the big squawking cock finally flew.

            Last season was her best ever, pointing grouse after grouse, almost never bumping a bird.  Certain days stick in my mind and I hope they always will.  Pointing side by side with our younger dog, she never looked better.  With tremendous luck I killed the first partridge of the season, on opening day, while the two dogs pointed shoulder to shoulder.  The retrieve was a bit contentious and they each somehow ended up with a wing, but remembering it makes me smile. 

            So I have to wonder how much longer Chara will hunt.  This season looks like a sure thing, which is good because the bird numbers are up.  Our two year old GWP, Colby, learns much hunting with Chara and hopefully will continue to absorb the older dog’s wisdom.  At times Chara appears impatient with the younger dog, but more often seems oblivious to the youngster’s presence.  Colby honors easily, almost never interrupting one of Chara’s points, obviously respecting the older dog’s rank.  Twice last season Colby pointed partridge on her own, along with dozens of woodcock, none of which I’m not sure would have happened without Chara’s example.

            Now Chara dreams on the rug by my feet.  I see her feet twitch and hear muffled barks or chirps, and sometimes even a low growl.  I wonder if she recalls the same events I do, and, if so, what her favorite memories are. 

            Chara will remain top dog until the day she is done, and I plan to make certain she knows it.  We have a long history together.