Innehållsförteckning för December 2016 - January - February 2017 från Gun Dog

This is NELLIE, my 3-year-old French Brittany, posing with wild pheasants taken near the Tucannon River in southeast Washington State. — Brian Jokela, Deer Park, WA KIMBER is our 1-/2-year-old English springer spaniel and this was her first full season of hunting roosters. My wife Amanda and I are both Army veterans so we thought it was fitting to take a picture with the U.S. flag in the background. — Chedric Phillips, Menoken, ND JACK, our 3-year-old male vizsla, is an AKC conformation champion and a bird-finding machine. Jack is currently working on his AKC field champion title and is a great companion gun dog. — Will and Lisa Garrett, Gainesville, GA LUTGARDE , our Labrador, retrieving a quail. She’s proven herself as an astute bird dog…does a grid search…

FOUR OF US reclined in layout blinds and waited for dawn. A roughly X-shaped flock of more than a hundred plastic geese enveloped us at its apex. Around us on all sides, the canola stubble was littered with goose droppings and feathers. It would be another hour before the sun would shine on our little corner of Saskatchewan. Hungry and slightly sweaty from the effort of setup, we washed down donut holes with coffee and made light conversation. As legal light arrived, we heard the first voices of geese in the distance. We immediately responded with the calls hanging from our necks, not because it was necessary, but one of the guys in our group worked for Knight & Hale. It would have been rude not to use the calls…

MOST SERIOUS SMOOTHBORE students are aware of the familial nuances of the Italian gun-making industry. It is a big deal to have your name on your guns. Batista Rizzini started his firm in Bresica, Italy, in 1966, and later trademarked the family name, thus forcing all other Rizzini manufacturers to stop using it. One fallout was Batista’s brother Isidoro formed the firm of Fabbrica Armi Isordoro Rizzini (F.A.I.R., i.e., arms made by Isodoro Rizzini) in 1971. Enter the Italian Firearms Group (IFG). IFG is a partnership of three Italian manufacturers, each catering to a different slice of the gun market, and all are well known and highly respected. Interestingly, the shotguns we now know as F.A.I.R. were previously imported as the Verona and Cortona brands, so their pedigree is extensive.…

“Because I was looking for something different,” is the way many Longhaired Weimaraner owners reply to the question, “Why did you choose this breed of a gun dog?” When asked this question, Steve Graham gives this answer along with an explanation as to why he chose this relatively rare version of this popular breed of gun dog. “I lived in England for many years while working as a European editor for the Associated Press. During that time, I made many trips to Germany, got to know hunters there, and saw the popular breeds of versatile gun dogs they used for hunting gamebirds as well as small and big game animals,” Graham recalls. “There were lots of German shorthairs, German wirehairs and wirehaired pointing griffons. And plenty of shorthaired Weimaraners, of…

PROBLEM I HAVE A 4-month-old English springer spaniel that I took home at 8 weeks. He comes from very good breeding and shows signs of being an up and coming gun dog. He does not get along with older dogs as he wants to play and tries to mouth and nip at them. I give him plenty of exercise as I have two large tracts of land I’m permitted to use and Long Island Sound for water work. I work with him every day on obedience, fetching and use a training table. I use only positive reinforcement and am thinking about using an e-collar. His concentration is short so I only use short sessions. I’ve been told I am his littermate now and the mouthing will stop when his permanent…

Less than a decade ago it was truly rare to hear of a shed-antler hunting dog. The wave, which was just starting to build then, was nothing more than a few folks who had combined their love of bird dogs with their love of deer and antlers. Count dog-training expert Tom Dokken as one of the people who decided to start teaching his dogs how to find cast bone. Dokken is familiar to just about anyone who knows something about bird dogs so it is no surprise that he was struck with the inspiration to start training his dogs to find antlers. It didn’t hurt, of course, that Dokken is a passionate bowhunter as well. According to him it all started about a decade ago. “I’ve always shed hunted because…

Resting on a shelf in our cabin is a white plastic box about five inches square containing a bag of gray ashes. Three red 12-gauge shotgun shells sit on the shelf beside it. I’ve pried open the crimps, replaced the pellets with some of the ashes, and recrimped the hulls. There’s a job to be done but I’ve been procrastinating. I’ve performed this job twice in the past and it wasn’t pleasant, yet it had great meaning for me. The ashes are the remains of my fourth Labrador retriever, Ebony of Lone Oak, otherwise known as Ebby. I plan to shoot the ashes out over the water in front of one of our duck blinds. I know it’s a silly ritual but I want her remains to rest where she…

DO YOU REALLY need to train a pointing dog? After all, they all point instinctively and some are natural retrievers, right? Why not just let nature take its course? You can go that route and some people do, and perhaps not coincidentally these are rarely people I enjoy hunting with. But let’s talk first about how the “hand’s off ” theory of dog training may have begun. Here’s my two cents’ worth: it’s easy. Let’s face it; not having to actually do anything with your dog absolves you of responsibility for its behavior, at least in theory. What’s more, there will be no more long afternoons spent slogging pigeons from one spot to the next or throwing heavy bumpers. No more e-collars, training benches, silly whistles or leads. You just…

REGARDING THE “SENIOR dogs” theme of this issue, some of you might think an article on working older dogs comes too late for this hunting season but down south there’s plenty of hunting left and for those in the northern states let’s apply these suggestions to the seasons to come. While we’re at it, we’ll discuss an overall plan of support for our younger dogs as well as our older dogs’ fitness and well being going forward. Actually, keeping an older dog in good health and physically fit involves most of the same considerations we apply to younger dogs, with exceptions primarily in the type and length of exercise activities. What is considered “old” for dogs? A lot of what you read today talks of five to seven years as…

THE OLD POINTER was sprawled so close to the fireplace that my uncle said, “I don’t know how Old Duke stands the heat but that’s his spot.” I remember well, even with the many years that have passed, that “his spot” was warm enough to overwhelm a sweaty kid snuggling up to him. For more than a decade, Old Duke had been my uncle’s go-to gun dog; now he was retired, and outside of a truck ride or an easy walk, had relegated himself to his place by the fire or in a ray of summer sun. Like most pointers he was even-tempered and tolerant of inquisitive boys. To this day I can call to mind the old-dog “fragrance” that rolled off Duke after a few minutes by the fire.…