When Two's Good Company

 - by Randy Lawrence

The highest compliment any serious gun dog enthusiast will ever pay another person is to ask him or her to bring a gun and walk along on a hunt with a first season prospect.   That means the invited person Gets It – capital “G,” capital “I.”  He or she understands that the hunt is about one thing and one thing only: constructively supporting a young dog as it finds its way on wild game.   If you’re ever honored enough to be invited on such a hunt, here are a few tips to make certain you are invited back.

 

1.      Stay the course. The handler sets the pace and direction of the hunt.  The guest’s job is to stay in touch with the handler, stay even with him or her or just slightly behind on the line of march.  Spacing is up to the handler, too, and is likely dependent on how wide that youngster is meant to range.  Those who like a bigger going dog might want more distance between hunters to widen the dog’s reference;  still others may ask a guest to walk behind the whistle with an open gun.

 

2.      Stay alive (quietly).  It should go without saying that the companion guest not speak to, whistle at, commiserate with, or otherwise handle the dog.  However, as a member of the support team, an alert guest can help keep track of the dog’s beeper or bell, can discern when the dog is making game, perhaps help locate the dog on point.  Because they are alive to everything from likely cover to wind direction, the best guests are able to provide thoughtful intel on bird contacts that happen away from the handler,  reporting on dog/bird interaction or marking flight lines for any birds that get up wild away from the dog or handler.  And speaking of birds…

 

3.      Stay with the program.   The kind of guest we want on any hunt is thinking gun safety, partner safety, dog safety at all times. When a dog is working scent or standing a bird, good guests are quick to position themselves as per the handler’s direction. Should they be asked to help flush, especially on a point well away from the handler, they move briskly and assertively and quietly upwind of the dog.  When possible, they step back in at an angle to, rather than passing and moving away from, the dog’s stand to encourage staunchness.  Again, never do they caution or cue the dog (personal bias: I’d rather the handler didn’t speak to the dog on point, either, but…). 

 

4.      Stay the trigger.  Surely the toughest thing for some guests, particularly when the day is long and bird contacts are sparse, is to only shoot birds the dog handles correctly.  Wild flushes or birds the guest walks up get a pass and are marked in case the handler wants to work the dog in that direction.

 

Blessed be the handler who has a hunting accomplice who can stick with the regimen and be a real help in hunting a young dog.  To the right person, sharing in the challenges and successes of that youngster’s progress is not just a privileged responsibility, but a darned good time as well.

Pen and ink miniature by Daniel Philip Cote; Randy Lawrence collection.

It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's the Moon?

It took planning to travel with ten dogs to hunt for six weeks.  Everyone needed to be in condition and ready to go, including two eight month olds who required gun introduction before we left so that they could hunt with others in their apprenticeship.

The pups had seen wild quail so they had a good idea of what their job was, but they needed a proper intro to the gun.  A quick trip to a farm with a wide assortment of pens holding both common and curious species of birds provided me with a few pigeons to use for the gun intro.

Native prairie grass behind the house was perfect for flying the pigeons.  The first couple of releases were meant to assure acclimation, followed by gunning if each pup’s responses were on track.  The first bird was a dark grey and fluttered past the pup with appropriate noise and speed and all lights were clearly on for Kate who had drawn the first run.

The next bird I tossed was mostly white and after I tossed it into the air it chose to land on the ground instead of flying.

Rut roh.

But Kate headed that way and slammed into a point and held. Atta girl. I had to roust the pigeon with my foot and off it flew, circling around and around my house, Kate in hot pursuit, eyes to the sky.

That darn bird and pup did three or four laps around the house before the pigeon finally landed on the travel trailer with the pup standing below, eyes locked on that white bird.  The rest of the preparatory training was less uneventful, all thankfully going to plan, and the great pigeon chase was forgotten. Or so I thought.

Arriving on the northern prairie with weeks of wild birds ahead was intoxicating, made more so by a crystal clear, cool night at the remote boondock camp.  As the dogs were aired for the last time that evening, I could hear them inhaling and sniffing the air, sorting out the many scents carried on the breeze. Except for Kate. 

I noticed that she was standing perfectly still, head high and muzzle pointing to the sky. I followed the direction of her gaze and saw what held her spellbound: the quarter moon, rising in the clear sky. She was as mesmerized as she had been by that white pigeon flying around the house back home.  The sky was clear for several nights and each evening Kate would eagerly search for her white pigeon in the sky. 

I don’t remember exactly how or why she lost interest in the moon. I suspect it was when she discovered the hot scent and chuckling flush of sharptail on our hunts. Looking back, though, Kate will always be my star who tried to catch the moon.

Blood In The Alders

 

We do not shoot woodcock in the home covert, fourteen acres that lay wet at the back of my farm. Through it crawls a lazy creek that the beaver jam every year or so with housing projects my Amish farmer wrecks with his backhoe. 

 

We planted black alders along that creek in 1988, trees that have been cut over twice, the last time in 2013.  The main stand holds bird in spring, dancers that spiral over an adjoining hayfield we call the Goose Pasture.  Last year was our best yet for staging birds on the move in autumn, the dogs pointing resting woodcock across the entire plot.

 

So the home covert is part woodcock preserve, part schoolyard, conditioning for the older dogs, the perfect place to light a fire under youngsters.  Since the last cut, the alders have yet to drown out the cane briar and black raspberry laced like concertina wire through the understory.  I follow my dogs, my loins girded in heavy canvas chaps over jeans, camera stuffed in the armored Filson vest that’s been missing a bottom button for twenty years.  I snug tight a low profile blaze orange cap that I will still have to pick up half a dozen times. Thick gloves I’d never wear toting a shotgun make running camera and blank gun a challenge.

 

But the only blood shed in the home alders comes from setter tail tips and hunter forearms…foreheads…and #@%&* ear lobes.  The older dogs know this covert by rote.  They muscle through sharp tangles and race along the more open fence row edge, pinning birds in places where they have found them for years.   It’s not pretty pointing dog work, more spaniel-like rooting at times.  But a hot point in a briary corner where we’ve found woodcock for generations of pointing dogs remains as fresh and exciting for Deacon and Doc and Lucy as it was for Arran and Captain, Cotton and Dusk, Willie, Dinah, Molly and all the rest…and is for me.

 

Before the alders were planted, the former owner of this farm rode a one-eyed white walking horse to his woodcock and even the occasional ruffed grouse, the dogs coming across wild birds in the thickets above broad food plots where bobwhite quail covied.  The quail were pen-reared in isolation, live trapped and never handled.  They were skittish, flushed hard and flew fast…but they weren’t wild birds, and the landowner used a highlighter to mark the woodcock contacts in his game diary where he kept track of dog work and shooting. 

 

We took turns as horse holders and gunners.  Not always, but most times, we shot over, rather than at, woodcock the dogs stood, not because we didn’t love the shooting or a lovely meal of fast-seared woodcock over wild rice.  We knew even back then that the birds were in trouble across their range and eventually consecrated the farm as sanctuary for them.

 

These days, the horses are saved for other times and places, and we take Shank’s Mare into the alders.  Even the puppy, the irrepressible Firelight Cool Hand Luke, takes a turn down one section that isn’t quite so gnarly, gamboling and snuffling and dinking about until I fly a big racing pigeon from the shoulder bag of loft birds I carry just to make sure there are no dry runs.  As the dark bird batters its way up and out of the alders, it’s almost like a cartoon electric charge runs all through the puppy;  when he chases, I squat to shoot the .22 blank gun into the ground, muffling its sharp report.  Every release adds purpose to puppy putzing and gets us closer to the time when a woodcock cooperates and holds upwind.  When that moment comes, point or push, it doesn’t matter.  It’s a wild bird contact, another chance to ignite his Firelight blood toward a gun dog fever from which I hope neither he nor I ever recover.

- Randy Lawrence

 

Introducing....

Randy Lawrence is to be an occasional collaborator on this blog. A retired teacher of writing from Hocking College, for 20 years, he wrote the monthly "Wingshooting" column for Sporting Clays Magazine. Randy shares his beautiful hillside farm in southern Ohio with a motley cast of canine characters including the setters Firelight's Deacon and Cool Hand Luke. Randy's 40 years' experience paired with his passionate, on-the-dog's-schedule approach has led to a fun and valued collaboration with me at Firelight.

Welcome Randy!

 - Lynn Dee                                                                                                 Randy and Deacon 

All Too Soon

 

When the feed store clerk came out with the heavy bag of pigeon seed, I opened the tailgate and asked him to set it next to the months’ worth of dog food bags that are still in the back from last week’s delivery.  Upon arriving home, I pulled into the garage next to the bags of recyclable bottles and also noticed that I had forgotten to take the trash to the transfer station last week. 

Crossing the driveway, I pulled the blue tarp a little tighter over the surplus firewood still lying in a jumbled heap in front of the garage, waiting to be cross-stacked in place since the garage already has four orderly rows of wood lined up from front to back. That wood ousted the little SUV that is loaded with dog crates, which means scraping heavy frost from the windshield each morning.

As I sit here at the laptop sitting on the kitchen table, the black, expensive-looking boxes from my new camera are still on the table as is the box with the new CO detector for the RV.  The Garmin doctors-bag-look-a-like sits at the end of the table with life supporting wires charging collars and handheld. Rain crusted leather boots sit in a scattering of sand beneath the table by the door and as I drop my gloves onto the mantle above the woodstove a small puff of dust lifts.  

The bottles, boxes and firewood will all still be there to be taken care of when accumulating snow gives last call to bird season. But for now, the eager young dogs need more birds, the skillful old dogs deserve more birds, and the primetime stars in between do also, and we all know that this favorite time will come to an end all too soon.

Puppy Boundaries

 Puppies.  Who doesn't love puppies? Yet many people dread the puppy phase of their dog's life.  When I read and hear about people whose puppies are terrors in the house, biting hands with their sharp teeth, chewing on woodwork and furniture, jumping on people, bolting out the door when someone comes in I can understand why they don't love puppies.  It doesn't have to be that way.

Start with the genetics of the puppy. Chose a breeding that offers the "livability" that you want for yourself. Actually witness adult dogs from the breeder living in a similar environment.  If your bird dog is going to double as a house pet I strongly recommend you spend some time in a home where one or more of that breeding lives.  Each of us has very different home situations, energies and stimuli and what one person considers good and acceptable may not be for you or me. 

Once that well chosen puppy is home it is still up to you to "civilize" it, that is, shape it into the dog that you imagined living with in the first place. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of setting boundaries with puppies starting the day that you bring them home.  Limits. Restrictions and understandings.  For example, from the beginning, my own dogs learn the following: No, you do not go through any door or gate unless I tell you to. No, you do not jump on people or nip hands. No, you do not get up on the sofa. No, you do not scratch the door when you want out. No, do not put your paws on the counter. You will spend quiet time in your crate or kennel. You will respect fences and not try to escape. You will sleep in until I get up.  

These are all very reasonable expectations that I set for my own dogs: each home will have it's own. I joke that my dogs are miscreants because I do not teach many of the usual pet commands such as sit or lie down. But from puppyhood my Firelight crew is taught my limits and boundaries which is how I can have a half-dozen bird dogs that double as house pets yet maintain a fairly normal looking home. Boundaries make for a more pleasant pet experience as well as help with building the foundation for the desired partnership in the field.  

My most recent miscreant pupil, Firelight Cool Hand Luke

Cheers

Lynn Dee Galey

Firelight Setters, Michigan

Choices Can Be A Gamble

 

When breeding my first ES decades ago I traveled to a very reputable breeder whose stud dogs were highly respected in the bird dog world. He let two brothers out into the exercise yard for me to choose between. Both were nicely built, good looking dogs.  The first one briefly greeted us and then went off across the yard  to do dog things. The second dog came over to me, held his head high and looked right at me.  He then floated across the yard with high head and tail catching the breeze of the day, looking like a million bucks. The bite on the second dog was off a bit so the owner said that he and others had usually chosen to breed to the first. But to me the decision was an easy one since I have always sought eye catching style.  I gambled on the bite and in all of these years I have had only one puppy with a bad bite but a whole bunch with that proud tail waving high in the breeze and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  

Firelight Storm and Firelight Tweed  

  

Cheers, Happy Hunting and High Tails,

Lynn Dee