Home Forums Birds & Dogs Hunting Dogs Discussion of Bird Dog Breeds

No arguments or pissing matches, please...

and i'll own up to being both low-rent, and lucky, in bird dogs...

most of my best performing dogs were free, or nearly so. but then, my house probably cost less than most guys' pickup trucks... (and my pickup probably cost less than some guys dogs )

i'm not ignorant of breeding, and it's relationship to health, behavior, or ability issues, but like i said, i've been lucky... and i feel like i can fairly well judge dogs when i get a chance to observe them...

all of the dogs i've raised and trained have been flushers or retrievers. my last retriever seemingly taught himself to point. this might have been in response to my own walking speed, which my buddies refer to as being "as fast as a speeding fencepost"...

i have hunted over most of the more common bird dog breeds, though... this would include the pointer, the english setter, the shorthair, draahthaar, brittany, vizla, weimar, labs, chessies, and springers/cockers...

i'd like to hear about different breeds regarding their family/home tendencies... my last dog that was strictly a kennel dog, was also the dog that i paid the most for. she had the heart and talent of a champion. and she was stolen while i was at work, the week before Christmas, during her first season...

the best family dog that we had was a female chessie. came to us as free as dirt... she was as healthy, behaviorally stable, and as exuberant a hunter as any guy could want. and she was the ultimate family dog... my oldest son learned to walk while hanging onto her lip...
rio was polite, if reserved around strangers... and still protective towards the family... she's the reason my wife is agitating for another chessie now...

best bird dog i ever owned was the yellow pointing lab mentioned above... we had him at the same time as rio, the chessie. they were a great pair...

to me, shorthairs are high strung and spastic, anywhere but in the field... most are huge runners who are hard to break from self hunting, once they're a ways from their handler...
But the all time best dog i ever hunted behind was a shorthair... she was a 3 year old pound dog when a buddy got her... by the time she was 5 he was guiding with her. she was spayed, and 8 years old when a client wrote a check for $10,000 for her... my buddy turned down the check... she hunted til she was 13 years old...

draahthaars are great bird dogs, but simply are not family dogs... at least the ones that i've known...

weimars much the same as draahthaars, and it's not that they're poorly behaved around kids, but that they are so attached to their hunter that they can't take being separated... one buddy couldn't go to work for 8 hours without the dog sitting at the window and yowling it's head off. his wife and kids about went crazy...

i've hunted over some very good english setters... but they picked up burrs like velcro...

and i've hunted over some great pointers... really great pointers... but i wouldn't consider any of them a family dog...

and the Vizla... the best i hunted over was a pretty fair dog... but most of them haven't impressed me with nose, ability, or drive...

please tell me about your dog experiences as relates to both hunting and family friendliness...

I had a shorthair "Tango". He was a spaz in the house, but could go all day in the field.

As much as I loved that dog, he had too much energy for my wife and I. We both work and it wasn't fair to us or the dog to not work with him as much as I had initially hoped. He had seizures all his life and I miss him something fierce.

I've learned from him and I go more for temperment than instinct. After all, I live with the dog a whole lot more than I hunt with him.

Hard to beat a good English Springer out of pure hunting blood.

Energetic in the field, but most calm down in the home. Great with family. Fit in the truck comfortably.

If flushers fit into your bird hunting they rank at the top.

Yes, you have been lucky if freebees have consistently turned into good hunters.

Without reguards to breeds..........some dogs hunt.........some dogs don't..........................

Best of luck....................

really like your brittany pics on the pic thread, battue... did you hunt the little cocker with your brits? always wondered how that might work out...

my yellow pointing lab, when hunted with my distinctly non-pointing chessie, simply reverted back to his flushing ways... the next time i would hunt him alone, he would go right back to pointing...

a friend of my dad's, who field trialed pointers, insisted that there was no such thing as a pointing lab. after hunting behind pete, he allowed that there was surely one pointing lab...

i raised one springer spaniel for myself, in high school... my dad always kept a pair and bred the occasional litter...

i'm thinking of a pointing breed, actually... i was promised a female pup out of a W.P. Griffon litter a year or so ago, but most of the litter was stillborn, and i lost out...

i have several friends who are sold on brittanies... but they sure cuss them in the field... i don't need the stress....
one friend, who has a ton of money invested in his current dogs, i just about won't hunt birds with anymore... it isn't fun with him being so stressed out....

and the best brittany he ever raised cost him, IIRC $150... that was 20 years ago, but still cheap in our area for a bird dog...

Right now I have a shorthair, an english setter, and a lab. My dogs live in the house with us, or in my camper or fifth-wheel, depends on where we are and what we are doing. The shorthair and the setter are about retired, 15 and 13 years, the lab is just 3. They have all got along well with folks, mostly I think because of the socializing they got around my family. I bought all these dogs from people I knew.

These dogs and every other dogs I have hunted over have a different hunting style and personality. The shorthair was a big runner (when she could still run) but we shot a bunch of birds over her, you just had to keep up. She will hold birds as long as the birds will hold.

The setter in his younger days was as good a pheasant dog as I have ever had. He seemed to figure out early when to hold a point and when to move. But he sometimes needs a tickle from the e-collar to remind him he is hunting with me.

The lab is showing a lot of promise, hunts with me and for me as well as any dog I have had.

My idea of the ideal kennel is a big running pointer who will hunt close when you ask him to and a close working flusher when the cover gets so heavy you can't keep track of the pointer

Heaven forbid, I just heard Abby and Duffy groan in unison.!!!!

They were both English Springers.

No doubt Abby had some long legs for a Springer. Duffy was a bull Springer if there ever was one.

Toby and Sam: English Cockers.

All my flushers have hunted with pointing dogs. They have been trained to stop at the sound of the beeper or whistle. They will stand and watch the action. However, at the sound of the gun, they are off for a retrieve.

I have two Vizslas and although I can't comment on hunting with them as this will be my and their first season, I can comment on them as a family dog. They are high energy and can be destructive if allowed. Very smart, almost too smart as they think about what you are commanding. They are the "velco dog". If you are sitting in a chair, they are coming on your lap. So far, happy with bred. I will let you know this fall about the hunting.

I can't imagine being owned by a better companion, hunter, or family dog than a GSP. Wish I had room for at least five.

My apologies to the memory of both of them...

No big deal. They had forgiving hearts and you were not the first to think Abby may have been a Brit.

my dad's last male springer, Doc, was referred to by some as a "bull springer"... the only truly mean springer i've ever known of... Dad never did breed him and had him cut when he was still a young dog...
had a mean streak from the day he was weaned...

My male springer, Gabe, was a big happy go lucky rascal out of the same (but later) breeding that produced Doc... but never a mean bone in him, and he was a heap of bird hunting fool...
When i joined the army i left Gabe with my brother, who had 2 young boys at the time... they were just toddlers when Gabe went to stay with them, but he hunted long enough for both of those boys to shoot over...
I actually had plans to reclaim Gabe after i left the service, but it would have been a fighting matter... And that dog was awful attached to those boys...

Duffy didn't have a mean bone towards people, but took no crap from other dogs....Until a medium sized Beagle taught him different.

There is a lesson in there somewhere.

like a lot of other shorthairs, then...
in my better days i hated trying to keep up with them...
and my better days were far enough back that i can amend my stories as it suits me, as many of the witnesses have passed on...

i reckon most meet the beagle one time or another...

His first tussel was with a groundhog that tore him up pretty good. From that day on he had a hatred for them and never lost another encounter.

Every so often he would get loose. He would come back and deposit a dead Grounhog on the porch, and if you were not there to make him come he would be gone again. The process would repeat for a couple days until he was filthy, hungry and wore out. Never saw it, but I think he was going into the tunnels and digging them out.

if he could out dig a groundhog, you likely could have rented him out as a backhoe!!!

some roads we only get to travel once...

I know all dogs are individuals, but I'm hard pressed to recommend one for in the house, and I've tried English Setters, GSPs, Brittneys. I have a Belgian Sheepdog now, and after two years I'm pretty happy. Definitely not a birddog, but I just use the one's at the "plantation", 'cause they ain't no wild birds around here no more. He hangs with me on my hiking/camping trips really well. All the birddogs would take off, eat the camp food when you weren't looking, or in some way make the trip unbearable. I just decided that for me, an urban physician who loves to bird hunt in Georgia, the best place for a bird dog is in someone else's kennel, although the mystic/romance is not lost on me at all, Lord knows I've tried to make it work.
Don