huNting airedales?

[arutch]

and you actually hunt airedales? are they any good? anyone know? anyone ever hunted and trained one?

thanks! aaron

[Hickboyaf]

What kind of hunting will you be doing? My buddy has one due to his alergys. She is younger and this will be her first season on birds. Dove opens on the first and he plans on having her out there to retrieve. She sure is birdy tho. And she is a tracker, came from a litter of lion hunters down in southern AZ. They are mostly used as fur dogs I believe. Ill have to get back to you after opening weekend of dove to let you know how she did.

[jimbo&rooster]

One of the guys we ran coyote hounds had a couple he used for catch dogs..... Not sure how they would be for birds though Id say they would be a little hardmouthed.

Jim

[JonahG]

http://airedalesareafailure.wordpress.c ... -3-legged/

As to their gameness, “Stonehenge,” in his “Dogs of the British Isles,” gave them a very bad character indeed, so far as courage was concerned.

“Airedale terriers are a Failure.
The result of my experiences of them is that I find them to have good noses, they will beat a hedgerow, will find and kill rats and rabbits, and work well with ferrets. They are good water dogs and companions, possessing a fair amount of intelligence.
This is the sum total of their excellence. They came to me with a great reputation for gameness, but out of fourteen that I have personally tried at badger and fighting with a bull terrier, I have Never found one game – at least, to my idea of the word.’

‘But any terrier that would do the above work better than another would be worth keeping. Were a dog like he of 45 1b. weight or more to be used at a badger he should kill the poor brute instead of merely “drawing” him.’

This is strong speaking, but this gentleman’s experiences corroborate every word of what has gone before, and the woeful exhibition made by some Airedales when tried at a badger at Wolverhampton last January was literally the laugh of the show.

So far, I am aware that my endeavours to supply information about the origin of the Airedale have not been attended with success, but upon the merits of the breed I can speak with more authority, having had the benefit of the experience of a gentleman who took it up some short time back from the glowing accounts he had heard of its gameness and bottom. The result was most Mortifying.

He could make nothing of the dogs, and was heartily glad to get rid of them. Prom what he tells me concerning Airedales, I have no doubt that they potter about the banks of a river, and take water well, and that they will kill rats, which, as they scale from 401b. to 501b., is not much in their favour.

I think that those individuals who at Wolverhampton show about 1883 made a semi-public exhibition of him against a badger, an animal the like of which the poor dog had never seen before, were extremely badly advised.

As for fighting, any terrier fond of it is a nuisance to his owner and to the owner of any other dog.
For the Airedale terrier was claimed superiority as a worker of the riverside after rats, and as an assistant to the gun in working hedgerows and thick coppices, which, it was said, he could do ‘better than a spaniel and take up less room than a retriever.’

‘I will even go further, and admit that specimens may be produced which will tackle a badger under protest; but not another step will I go in favour of the Airedales as a game, hard-bitten race.
Summing up the merits and demerits of the breed, it must be said of the Airedale that his want of heart, his size, the diversity of types, and tendency to throw back in breeding, are great drawbacks, which his fondness for water, scarcely out-balances.’

Therefore, when we find, as I believe we can, that a wire-haired Scotch, Dandie Dinmont, Skye, Irish, or small bull terrier possesses all the gameness of the Airedale (in addition to which they take up one quarter of the room, and can go to earth), the question only remains, ” Why keep an Airedale ?

and

From Daily Terrier Dose Website
‘In this particular case, even the word “terrier” does not tell you very much, as a pit bull is not a terrier by any definition (it is too large to go ground and it does not even look like a terrier). The pit bull is a molosser breed, pure and simple.
Adding the name “terrier” to its name does not change the reality, any more than calling me “Sue” would make me a woman. For the record, the pit bull is not the only “terrier” that has been misnamed.
The airedale is almost pure otterhound underneath it all, and is a terrier in appearance only do to tremendous amounts of clipping and breeding to make it look more and more like a welsh terrier.
Go look at an old Airedale picture (it is not a very old breed) and you will see it is just an odd looking otterhound that has been tidied up. A hound is not a terrier, not does the Airedale fit within the terrier form or function mold.”

Theres video on Utube of an Airedale in a pheasant field.
Its worse than watching paint dry and equally as painful.

[Hickboyaf]

Well I would have to say the little lady did well. Boreing and under foot but she retrieved down birds and found all of them with ease. Probably my favorite part of the hunt was watching her attempt to pick up a wounded flapper runner bird. Getting her out with my gsp helps her range a little bit but there is no way she can keep up especially after any amount of time. Opening day was fun in all! My boy and I can't wait for quail! We came across 2 coveys of 5-8 birds a piece. It's good to see that!