Innehållsförteckning för November 2018 från Gun Dog

“MY FATHER, Hugh Arthur, started Sandhill Retrievers in 1969,” Al Arthur laughs as he describes his childhood while recalling, “I grew up with dogs. When I was a baby I didn’t teethe on a pacifier like most kids, I used a dog’s ear or his tail.” “Growing up, my dad let me mess with a lot of dogs,” Arthur says. “He also introduced me to club trials at a young age and the competitive bug has stuck with me ever since. After college, I tried a few other lines of work, but I knew I wanted to get back to dog training. My dad had me work with another pro for a few years and then I went back to training with him.” By 1999, Hugh was getting ready to…

FOUNDED IN 1985, Pheasant Creek Farms is, as its name suggests, a collection of working farms all within a few miles of Spencer, S.D., which is located 42 miles west of Sioux Falls on Interstate 90 and 22 miles northeast of Mitchell, S.D., in the east-central part of the state. A modest lodge big enough to accommodate six hunters is the headquarters and meeting place for clients who can begin a hunt 50 yards from the front door or travel 10 to 20 minutes to the four working farms that provide over 2,500 acres of typical South Dakota pheasant habitat. This includes large tracts of native prairie up to a half-mile square, tree lines a mile in length, 200-acre cattail sloughs dry enough to walk in, and miles and miles…

THINKING OF ALASKA often centers around prospecting for gold or its world-class big-game hunting and fishing, but folks, I’ll tell you this: Alaska’s upland bird hunting is over the top as well. Alaska offers outstanding ptarmigan, sharptail and ruffed grouse hunting if you know where to go. I know you can find videos of ptarmigan running around in the brush like chickens, where folks can easily take them with pellet guns at close range, so you ask, what’s the sport in that? Well, put a bird dog on the ground and things change real fast. These birds make a living outwitting four-legged predators and provide very sporting wing shooting when hunted with a dog. When I’ve hunted Alaska, usually in August, ptarmigan act similarly to early season sharptails, Huns and…

PROBLEM  In the August 2018 issue, I suggested how to handle a singleton puppy to minimize social damage. This column is about a singleton that missed out on the help it needed. My purpose is to demonstrate how important primary socialization and exposure to challenges are to a puppy. The writer said: A pup was brought to me for training, a one-year-old singleton retained by the breeder. The pup has lived in the home with its mother and a nine-year-old, unrelated male. During training the pup was rewarded with food treats without the conditioned reinforcement of a clicker—just food rewards. The result is a dog that keeps looking for the owner’s hand (for treats) rather than paying attention to the work expected. He had no exposure to pups his age.…

Actually, the weather wasn’t too bad most days, except for the horizontal snow and sleet pellets, howling winds, and freezing temperatures. As we tired but determined hunters forged forward upwind into a dense shelterbelt, the noses of the two black Labs sniffed out every pheasant cloistered in the dense undergrowth. Pushed from their hides, the birds reluctantly burst into flight ahead of us, only to quickly rise above the cedars, catch the gale, and sail at warp speed back behind us, usually without a shot being fired. And so it went, as four gun scribes, two company reps, and a guide hunted in south-central South Dakota. It was late October, and conditions were typical of the area. As such, the pheasants had an advantage trying to evade the dogs, us,…

It’s time once again to send us a photo of your sporting breed puppy for possible use in our spring 2019 issue. Here’s your chance to show off your little pride-and-joy/unholy terror, but hurry—the submission deadline is Friday, December 7. Email your submissions to: joseph.genzel@outdoorsg.com. Minimum size requirements for magazine reproduction are 5x3 at 300 dpi or 1,500 by 900 pixels. Most cell phones and digital cameras now take excellent photos, but make sure your phone or camera is set on the highest resolution possible. When you email us your pics—and please, no more than one or two per contributor, as we can’t download and file more than that—be sure to include a brief message with your pup’s name, breed, age and any interesting personality details, plus your name and…

THERE’S A CURIOUS thing that can happen with flushing dogs during the season. If you’re not paying close attention, the distance at which they work tends to increase. This can happen so gradually, over a month in the pheasant fields or maybe while coursing the sandhills for prairie chickens, that it can come as a surprise when your dog is suddenly working at 50 yards or farther. This, as we all know, is about 25 yards beyond the ideal range. What happens, at least most of the time, is that we have a few clunker hunts where the birds just aren’t cooperating and we let our guard down. Our dogs are always paying attention, and they notice when we let them roam a little farther than we usually do. After…

THERE’S NO MISTAKING that the participation of women in hunting has grown in the past few years. In fact, of the 11.5 million hunters in this country, 11 percent are female. The rising number, specifically the staggering statistic that 47 percent of women use a shotgun to hunt, has led to a wave of firearms being made specifically for women—by women. Enter Syren, a division of shotgun makers Caesar Guerini and Fabarm, that is devoted to the female hunter. Ditching the “pink it and shrink it” mentality, Syren has dedicated its efforts to producing shotguns specifically designed for female shooters and their anatomy. Gone are the days of youth shotguns with short stocks as the only option for women hunters. This high-end firearm maker takes women shooters seriously and produces…

It was an uphill maze of downed timber and brush so dense my boots couldn’t touch the ground. Fallen trees crossed on top of each other, their twisted branches intertwined, stretched as far as I could see. Climb over, crawl under, push through, rest, repeat. The issue was the 40-pound pack on my back—and the 20-pound pack my Lab, Lincoln, carried. Every few feet our forward progress was suddenly stopped, my pack too big to make it cleanly through the small openings between the trunks. While I untangled myself, Lincoln’s pack would catch on the web of snarled branches, and the situation turned chaotic as I attempted to stay on my feet long enough to free us both. If we weren’t caught up, we were left staring at downed tree…

PART 1 TAKES place on an early morning deep into October. A man and his Labrador retriever are hunkered down in a scanty blind during a heavy, blanketing snowfall. A flock of wigeons zips unseen through a curtain of snow straight into the decoys where the man knocks down a brace of drakes. The Lab competently retrieves the pair, and the man, after admiring the lovely birds, decides to wait out the snow and see what the rest of the morning might hold. By midmorning the snow begins to ease. Silver-dollar-sized flakes become small and pellet-like as the temperature plummets and the breeze freshens into a slanting blow that disperses the wall of once-thick flakes into a thin, gauze-like fabric. The surface of the small lake is choppy, and the…

1 POINTS LIKE A DREAM Remington’s Versaport gas system is on par with Beretta’s Kick-Off in our opinion, and that makes the V3 a damn fun gun to shoot on high-volume shoots. The eight gas ports are in the chamber, and the length of the shell determines how many ports open. The V3 uses good ol’ Remington Chokes to deliver consistent patterns, and it handles great; like a Remington. $995 | remington.com 2 HAIL, CAESAR! Made in Italy, Caesar Guerini’s classy Magnum Light is an over/under that is light enough to carry all day yet has the balance of a heavier gun. The action and forend iron are made of ai r c r a f t- g r a d e aluminum reinforced with hardened steel at…

SOUNDS LIKE AN easy answer, right? Of course a dog’s nose is important. But is it more important than all the other things that go into the making of a crackerjack bird dog? Let’s take a look. I can still remember a few things about my first bird dog, a Brittany my father bought me when I was 12 (this would be shortly after the Civil War, in case you were wondering). And one of the things I most recall is that I was concerned— tortured may be a more apt description of what I felt—by doubts about my dog’s nose. I pored over all the hunting magazines of the day, and if there was a scenting test the expert du jour recommended, I tried it. Invariably, my poor dog…

IF YOUR DOG is anything like the dogs I own, he gets dirty fast. After a day in the field, he’ll be covered with burrs, mud, and in a worst-case scenario, fleas or ticks. Luckily, there are several tools that will quickly take care of those problems, tools that all good dog owners should keep within arm’s reach. The first is a stiff wire brush. I’m not talking about the type you use to scrub the rust off a frying pan; I’m talking about the short-bristled “slicker” brushes made specifically for dogs. Plastic bristles will work, but wire bristles work better. They’re excellent for removing dried mud, dust, and a million other little things that can stick in a long-haired dog’s coat. For things the wire brush can’t remove, like…

My experience is pretty limited when it comes to terriers. Our next-door neighbors made the mistake of getting a brother and a sister out of the same litter when they had no idea how to work with one puppy, let alone two. Then they broke every rule of dog ownership. No socialization, no real training to speak of, and the dogs get very little exercise. In other words, they are a horrible duo that will not be missed when they finally move on to the great barking grounds in the sky, which can’t happen soon enough. All that stated, I was pretty curious when editor Rick Van Etten asked me to tackle a piece on Jagdterriers, and more specifically, how the breed can be used by pheasant and duck hunters…