Home Forums Birds & Dogs Hunting Dogs Smallest Pointing Breed

Nonsense, great dogs are great dogs anywhere, your situation and "thick cover" would be handled with ease by long ranging pointers. you also said that a long ranging pointer cant pin down a late season rooster..really? You obviously haven't worked with a well trained long range dog. The dogs I run range as far as they need to, they dont need to be told, they know how to hunt birds. I'm sorry you haven't had the pleasure of hunting behind one of these great dogs, your generalizations are an obvious lack of experience, IMO.


This pic is in Kansas, in December. I hope some day you have the pleasure of a great pointing dog ranging out, then turning in and pinning those running buggers between yourself and him. You could hunt a dog at gun range here, but your gonna walk along ways, likely never to see a bird.




the same dog can do the thick stuff, like I said, great dogs adjust accordingly

Well. I might have to put my money where my mouth is. Im hopefully going pheasant hunting in PA on thursday. The owner of the lodge told me last night that conditions weren't great because of the snow. Ive never heard anything like that before! ....... He said the snow knocked down the grasses and there isn't any cover with the snow. He said the farm fields are fine but pointing dogs don't work real well because the pheasants can run so much. I believe he said they were sweet gum fields? (have no idea what those are, or even if they exist. all I know is they don't have em out west were Im from ;-) .... Anyways, they hunt springers at the lodge. He didn't sound real enthusiastic when I told him I wanted to bring my 1 1/2 year old brittany. Luckily, she was on pheasants all summer. She learned how to pin them pretty quickly. Her trainer told me her bird work is way above a 1.5 year old dog. He says she acts more like almost every 3 year old dog he trains. But, she hasn't been on wild pheasants in about 4 months, so it could be interesting... Im hoping she remembers real quick, and doesn't go bowling for birds. If they even hold a little bit, shes gonna nail em.

rosco,
I have plenty of experience and I have hunted behind many excellent dogs. I told some of my hunting buddies about this post and you should have heard the laughter. Now these ain't weekend warrior hunters either, but dedicated, experienced hunters who have shot more roosters than I could count.

"Nonsense, great dogs are great dogs anywhere, your situation and "thick cover" would be handled with ease by long ranging pointers." That tells me you have never hunted our birds.

I was out this weekend hunting the farm in the pic. We snuck in from about half a mile away, never made a sound. Not whistle, not a word, not a bell, nothing. On top of that, we were walking in fresh snow. But of course walking through the willows and grass made a little noise. The pointers stayed close...30 yards and in. The birds? They all flushed from 100 to 500 yards out. Except one rooster that allowed my brit to track him for about 30 yards before he got up. However, he got up about 35 yards crosswind of where my dog was locked up. Explain to me how your dog is going to hold birds for minutes when my dog cant get within 500 yards of them? Do your dogs have a stealth mode? I believe that you have a lack of experience hunting pressured birds. You are lucky in that regard. Believe me when I say, far ranging dogs will NOT work where we hunt. The birds here are unbelievably skittish. Literally, if you slam the door on your truck, birds will erupt a quarter mile away.

The other problem with far ranging dogs is when then encounter big flocks of pheasants. Especially when there is snow. Too many eyes and ears and the whole group erupts.

We have some pretty good late season rooster hunting here. Maybe not up to SD standards, but we usually each get our 3 birds per day. I have hunted them extensively in IA, SD, ND, MT, and KS as well and I dont believe I will ever trade in my close working dogs for ones bumping birds too far away. Heck, my close ranging dogs bump birds too far away fairly often. They are at 30 yards and bump birds cross wind and down wind all the time. Birds they (nor ANY dog) could possibly know was there.

After reading all the posts, Hard to make sense of which: Far or close ranging dog is best. Both have valid points. Growing up with GSP they would range a lot farther out chuckar hunting than pheasant hunting. The cover was really thick for pheasants and I think they just couldn't cover it as fast so they would slow down on there own, But got out there to cover the ground and find those chuckar didn't have to teach any of that they just knew. One thing we all agree on, Nothing hardly better than watching a dog do the magic they were born to do. Lot's of good info here guy's..
Thanks all.

I wrote a long sarcastic response, but to keep it civil, i deleted it.

I hope you have luck for the remainder of the season.

Watch the video link I posted. There were probably 30+ birds in the flock. You can see 10-15 flush in the video. They didn't erupt in an entire group. She had them pinned and they started pusting 1 at a time as we walked up. Easy pickings if we were hunting...

I've hunted over pointers a number of times here in MT, some very good ones too. When the birds are holding for them it's fun - nice easy shots at close birds. When birds are skittish or in very light cover, a pointer just serves as a flusher. Now if that same dog was ranging out to 100+ yds we'd just be watching birds flush as opposed to hunting. One of the main reasons I'd rather just hunt over a flusher, they work the same regardless of what mood the birds are in.