Gun Dog Magazine is the best magazine for hunting enthusiasts who are owners of retrieving breeds. Each issue is guaranteed to be filled with useful information devoted to you, your dog and the sport of upland bird and waterfowl hunters.
LAST SEPTEMBER I was invited to attend the National Shoot to Retrieve Association’s Purina Endurance Trial, hosted by the Iowa Gun Dog Association. The week-long event was held near Osceola, IA, and entrants came from far and wide—Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Virginia, Georgia, Nebraska, Missouri, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Michigan and (of course) Iowa were among the states represented. One hundred twenty-eight dogs competed in a “Beat Your Bracemate” elimination contest, with the winner of each 30-minute brace advancing to the next level until the final one-hour brace between the two top dogs was run on the last day of competition. A good cross-section of breeds, including Brittanys, German shorthairs, German wirehairs, pointers, English setters and red setters, made up the roster. Dogs were scored on finds, retrieves, honoring, obedience and ground…
VERSATILE REBUTTAL Loved the photo reprise of Chumlee v. Whispering Wind (also your cover dog, Dec/Jan/Feb. 2015-16) accompanying Dave Carty’s “Sporting Dog Forum” on page 28 of the June/July issue. Not so happy, however, with Dave’s dismissal of the “versatile” breeds, as that’s one quite accomplished example in the photo. Chumlee, a Deutsch Langhaar, also happens to be the papa of my pup, who just finished her NAVHDA NA and JVG VJP tests. Alan Nickelson via email LEARNING WITH RUBY The article “The Novice, the Pup and the Badlands” from the Nov. 2016 magazine immediately stuck out to me. I am also a young female hunter with my first bird dog in training. Most of the time it feels very overwhelming attempting to train a bird dog without any prior…
One-year-old Brittany LEXI wrapping up a successful year of quail hunting. — Robert Harper, Norman, OK My Brittany, FANNY , pointing a quail as it flushed, while on a plantation hunt with my dad. — Garrett West (12), Wilmington, NC This is my four-month-old German shorthair, BOOMER, pointing in South Dakota. — Denny Wohlford, D.D.S., Payallup, WA This is REBA at seven months pointing released quail. She has only gotten better. She hunts only grouse and woodcock now. —Bill Disanto, Coopersburg, PA PHOTO SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Please send digital images (not print-outs) by e-mail, or online archives, such as dropbox.com or hightail.com; or they may be submitted on disc to: GUN DOGMagazine Attn: Snap Shots 2 News Plaza. 3rd Floor Peoria, IL 61614 Most modern phones and digital cameras…
WHAT’S THAT SMELL? There’s an old saying: You can’t make a bird dog without plenty of birds. Well, not all of us have easy access to training pigeons. That’s where incorporating something like BirdDown scents can help duplicate the real thing. Water-, saliva-and weather-resistant, these convenient sticks are an easy way to add scent to bumpers. conquestscents.com TRAVELIN’ MAN For the traveling hunter, owning a soft-sided cooler to transport meat home is a must. The leak-proof Hopper Two (available in three sizes) keeps ducks—and just about anything you can think of—cold. The zipper was re-designed on the Hopper for easier access...and it makes all the difference. yeticoolers.com DOUBLE THE PLEASURE Known for thumping .50-cal. rifles, Barrett has a line of racy Italian over/unders called the Sovereign. Reliable boxlocks, the two…
Sooner or later your dog is going to run into an animal that wants to hurt him...but with some common sense, you can avoid many of these animals most of the time. IT WAS TANGO’S first season. She’d run ahead and disappeared over a rise. A moment later I heard my friend’s voice: “Dave, Tango’s got a porcupine. You better get up here.” Sure enough, when I arrived she was warily circling downwind of a porkie, which had parked itself in the middle of a wheat field and rolled into a protective ball. Tango was creeping toward it, curious but cautious at the same time. She’d never seen a porcupine. This was one of the few times in my dog-training career when serendipity got the drop on bad luck. The…
THE LABRADOR RETRIEVER has ascended to the zenith of American popularity while the nation’s human population has undergone a sweeping urbanization. Meanwhile, the total population of breeding ducks in North America has doubled. Of course, correlation does not prove causation, so the simultaneous occurrence of these trends may be nothing more than a coincidence. Whether causal or not, these trends mean the Lab is not merely the dog of the hour, but likely the dog of the future as well. Like many Americans, I was raised in the countryside but have lived much of my adult life in the city. Along the way I made the journey from pointing dogs to spaniels and finally to retrievers. That journey is not a mere accident of tastes. Each breed made perfect sense…
