MD,
Seems like most of your personal bird dogs have been labs, or lab crosses. Ever owned a pointing breed dog?
If you were gonna start one last pup, what type and from where?
I have never owned a pointing dog, but have hunted over a bunch of 'em since starting to hunt upland birds 58 years ago--which is also when I started waterfowl hunting. At that time my primary hunting mentor was a guy named Norm Strung, who was just starting to make a living as an "outdoor" writer. As I did early in my writing career, he hunted big game and fished a lot, along with hunting upland birds and waterfowl. At that time he had a pair of Brittany spaniels and a Lab, but within a few years decided to just use the Lab, because using one all-around dog worked much better between all his other pursuits.
Which is partly why I started out with a Lab, at age 19. The other reason is my first wife's mother gave me a black male, part of a pair of males from the same litter. (She gave the other to her husband.) I knew little about dog training from Norm, and learned some more from various books, and when Gillis was six months old he flushed the first covey of upland birds he ever smelled, and nicely retrieved the two sharptailed grouse I shot. (He was also relatively small and lean, weighing around 65 pounds at his peak, which helped with his endurance in the field.)
Eventually he flushed and retrieved every upland bird in Montana, after I moved to the western end of the state. We have around a dozen legal species.
He flushed and retrieved a bunch more over the 13 years he lived, partly because that first wife was an enrolled member of the Fort Peck Reservation in northeast Montana--and her grandfather was an avid hunter and angler. The marriage brought me the same rights to hunt as tribal members, and since Ben was retired and I was starting to make OK money writing so didn't need a full-time job, we hunted a lot together, and that part of Montana has excellent upland and hunting. (Or it did back then. It has since been "discovered" by hunters from other states.) There were also no "closed" season or bag limits, and one fall I killed 66 sharptails, along with various other upland birds including Hungarian partridge, pheasants and sage grouse--along with a variety of ducks and Canada geese.)
Anyway, I eventually got divorced, but still had Gillis when I met and married Eileen. By that time he'd started pointing quite a few upland birds, especially pheasants--as many Labs do as they age. After we had to put him down I didn't even think about getting anything except a Lab. Found a chocolate male through a friend, whose parents weighed 65 and 70 pounds. He grew up to be right around 100 pounds when lean and mean, but was big even we got him as a 3-month-puppy, the reason we named him Keith, in honor of Elmer--because he was a "big-bore boy." He couldn't hunt upland birds early in the season unless they were near water, because he got too hot--but was the best waterfowl (especially goose) dog I've ever had.
Keith also hunted until 13, and around that time we got invited to hunt quail with a guy in southern Arizona who was a bird-hunting guide, dog breeder and pointing-dog trainer who was good enough that people as far as away as England shipped him dogs to be trained. He had around a dozen Llewellin setters for upland hunting, but also guided waterfowl hunters, especially in the Midwest where the spring snow-goose season had started, so also had one Lab, a male--which was kept in a second kennel, separated from the setters by a chain-link fence.
One night around New Year's Eve the Lab and one of his female setters had a party, apparently through the fence, and soon she had 11 puppies. He kept two, and gave rest away--including a male to us, because he knew Keith had recently passed. He said, "You NEED this dog, he's a GOOD boy." He was six months old, because our friend always kept pups until that age so they'd be socialized, and so he came to Montana. We named him Gideon, after a really good tracker we'd hunted with in Namibia, and Gideon eventually got to hunt birds from Alberta to Arizona, and the U.P of Michigan to Oregon.
This was because both Eileen and I were assigned books around 2000, mine
Shotguns for Wingshooting, and Eileen's
Upland Bird Cookery. So we put around 12,000 miles on our pickups to both field-test shotguns and collect kitchen specimens for the cookbook. Consequently Gideon got to hunt 11 species of upland birds in four months, and did really well. In fact in two of the places we hunted, the Sand Hills of Nebraska (primarily for prairie chickens) and the U.P. of Michigan (primarily for woodcock, but also for ruffed grouse--though we also have plenty in Montana) some of the other hunters asked if they could hunt with Gid and us. He wasn't quite as good a retriever as a pure-bred Lab, but could go all day.
After Gideon we bought a female chocolate Lab from a local breeder, who'd bought her partly as a show dog--but her ears turned out to be too short. We bought Lena at 18 months, and had to go through a "trial" before Nola would sell her to us. Nola lived on a ranch, where we went for a walk with her, Lena and couple of Nola's other Labs around a hayfield. After a few hundred yards, Lena stuck her nose in the air started tracking a scent toward the middle of the field. The other two Labs followed, looking puzzled--until after around 300 yards Lena put up a covey of Huns. She has the best nose of any Lab I've hunted with, and has hunted and retrieved every upland bird in Montana, along with plenty of ducks and geese.
Anyway, will probably get another Lab, due to all the above reasons, but am thinking of a "miniature" Lab, which grow up to around 35-50 pounds--mostly so I can lift the dog more easily as I age. Have some info on good breeders, so we'll see.
