Continued / common sence post. Field trial dog past/present

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ohiogsp
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Continued / common sence post. Field trial dog past/present

Post by ohiogsp » Sun Nov 11, 2007 2:19 pm

The cover would make a great difference in if your dog would cover a square mile in a hour. If it was thick no but around here where I live we hunt ditches and fence rows and you can easily cover a mile in a hour. Ft's are not about covering the whole ground anyway it is about hitting the spot the birds are and finding them. Running the edges and hittng objectives where birds are most the time at. It is kind of like when you are fishing and you only fish the honey holes where you know the fish are. You will probably catch more fish than if you fished everywhere in the lake. The dog should goto the honey holes. I will start a new thead this one is way off topic. I will put this post there.
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Over the Hill

Post by Over the Hill » Sun Nov 11, 2007 3:47 pm

I think the way field trial areas and even some preserves are laid out probably makes that generally true, but if you're hunting in farm country it's not so much a matter of certain objectives as it is where the birds are likely to be feeding--especially in the morning.

When's the last time you hunted corn and bean fields? Even after they're harvested, there's pretty good cover for birds, until the snow flattens it out.

Also, where bird populations are decent, having a dog that misses a lot of areas where birds could be might not matter too much. But around here, where there's 3 or 4 pheasant in that square mile if you're lucky, I want a dog that's pretty thorough.

Over the Hill

Post by Over the Hill » Sun Nov 11, 2007 4:52 pm

I guess I made a mess here. Now you have to jump from one topic to another to see what's been said!

Ted:
My apologies to Charlie... I’ve known a few girls named Charlie, but never a guy named Rose before! (Actually, I went back and looked and now know it’s his kennel name.)

The way you said you heard All Age defined (recently, I take it):
…you turn them loose & then go find them on point.
and the way I heard it defined 35 or 40 years ago:
…an All Age dog is more experienced so he doesn't need as much direction and can therefore range out farther. I was left with the impression that there was a logical progression from Puppy through Derby to Gun Dog, and then when the dog was truly polished and could hunt without a lot of guidance from his owner to All Age.
pretty much shows that there's been a dramatic change in the way range in field trial dogs is viewed over the last couple decades. At the risk of repeating myself, I'm still wondering, why?

I can certainly understand how out west a dog could efficiently cover a mile in an hour, there isn't that much cover that could hold birds, and some pretty good stretches of ground in between.

OhioGSP:

You compared hunting to fishing, but aren't birds planted or released at field trials and preserves? Isn't it sort of like only fishing in a stocked pond?

And my ideas on hunting are probably a little different than many of yours. I'd rather spend three days hunting an area where everyone swears there aren't any birds and come up with one than to shoot 30 planted birds on a preserve.

I've had Heidi on a preserve a few times. With our bird populations so low here in Pa, I won't shoot a wild pheasant anymore. I figure it's only fair to take her someplace where I don't mind killing a few birds for her.

Ted, you mentioned Heidi's breeding, and yes, she's pretty heavily bred on field trial dogs. In fact, except for her mother and a few show dogs back from Bourbon, her pedigree is all field. But there are none of the modern trial lines involved. It's all the old lines; Esser, Wildburg, Greif and Moesgaard. And she's not, by any of the definitions I've found on this site, close ranging. (Mr.) Rose could have been describing her when he talked about a dog adjusting range to cover.

Other than Heidi, every dog I've owned has been out of straight field trial stock, most sired by well known field champions. I just see an incredible difference in dogs from the modern lines, like the three I owned recently, and those from "old" trial lines that my dad and I had owned previously.

And it isn't just a matter of range. The dogs from the older lines seemed much more atuned to me and definitely needed less training. They even look a lot different, with the modern lines being smaller and racier, and it seems 90% of them are white. Sadie, my Slick/Rusty/Ohi bred bitch only weighed 35 pounds, while Heidi and the other bitches from older breeding all weighed 45-50 pounds.

The size difference may also go back to an east-v-west thing, as I imagine the smaller lighter dogs are best in thin cover on rough terrain. And the white color would help with the heat.

But I'm convinced that these lighter dogs can't fight their way through heavy cover without wearing pretty thin, so in this area, I think a dog with a little more heft will hold up better. And since it's almost always cold during hunting season, the darker color isn't a disadvantage either. (I have to admit the white dogs are much easier to see.)

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Post by ohiogsp » Sun Nov 11, 2007 5:30 pm

I was not really talking about trialing. Let say you are going to hunt a field and it is corn stuble and the whole field is surounded by fence rows/waterways (I just got back from Iowa and most fields are like this). Where are you going to shoot your birds? Let just say I wish I had a 4-wheeler or a horse or something out there. There is grassy fields out there but you probably won't get permission to hunt them they are far and few between. This is a trend across the whole county. Turn everything into crops. In the CRP that we did get to hunt it was great and you would not want a dog to get too far in that cover. Most good ones won't in the thick stuff anyway. The rest of the time we would have been way better of running my bigger running dog from something that moved other than my legs. (man did those thing hurt).

Is your dog right out of shameless? If so I am sure you realize those dogs don't care what the cover is nothing stops them and yes they might get tore up but it will not bother them a bit.
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Post by ohiogsp » Sun Nov 11, 2007 5:39 pm

You are right about the dogs changing but alot of people like it. I firmly believe you can make those big runners hunt close all the time if that is what you want. Then you have a closer working dog that just works harder and covers more ground. If you don't like the FT lines of today just buy dogs that are bred for other venues. There are dogs like the old ones you had out there and you could still get that same type dog you had before.
<table width="300" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="4"><tr><td width="75"><a href="http://www.perfectpedigrees.com/genview ... =184"><img border="0" src="http://www.perfectpedigrees.com/picture ... /td><td><a href="http://www.perfectpedigrees.com/genview ... 184">DIXIE HIGHWAY'S BOOZE RUNNER JH
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Post by ohiogsp » Sun Nov 11, 2007 5:46 pm

Those white dogs are easier to see and especially when they are 500 yards away and running down the next fence row you need that. It is all that pointer that is bred into them. :lol:

P.S. I don't consiter myself a Trialer. I do mostly hunt test and some FT's but I like the dogs and that is really why we have them. No one needs to go hunt birds to eat anymore and it is more expensive than food today anyway.
<table width="300" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="4"><tr><td width="75"><a href="http://www.perfectpedigrees.com/genview ... =184"><img border="0" src="http://www.perfectpedigrees.com/picture ... /td><td><a href="http://www.perfectpedigrees.com/genview ... 184">DIXIE HIGHWAY'S BOOZE RUNNER JH
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Over the Hill

Post by Over the Hill » Sun Nov 11, 2007 6:01 pm

Ted:
Where will I find a link to your pedigree?

Over the Hill

Post by Over the Hill » Sun Nov 11, 2007 6:18 pm

Ohiogsp:

Sadie wasn't a Shameless daughter. She was sired by an untitled littermate to Heide Ho's Mr.T (Heide's Mighty City Slicker x Chicoree's Cherry Cola) Her dam was a littermate to L.B.'s Ohi Rummy ( Windwalker's Desperado [Dixieland Luke x Windwalker's Southern Comfort] X L.B.'s Ohi Lickity Split [Northman's Dixieland Cody x L.B.'s Ohi Kate])

As I said above, she weighed about 35 pounds and couldn't even begin to handle heavy cover like Heidi did. But that wasn't my biggest complaint with her. She was hard headed and tended to be a self hunter. As I told Ted in e-mail, I'm sure she'd have made a wonderful dog for someone that's a better trainer than I am, but she was too much dog for me.

Over the Hill

Post by Over the Hill » Sun Nov 11, 2007 8:41 pm

Ted:

That would make sense. Around the house Sadie was as sweet and easy to live with as you could find. But Luke was her great grandfather, and could only account for 1/8 or 1/16, depending on how you're calculating it, of her genetic makeup.

We were members of the national club for years (until the magazine went to pot in the mid '90s) and I read it religiously. It seems to me that Stormcrow in Dixie and some of the other Rusty breeding in there did a lot of trial winning. As did the LB dogs.

And from what I've seen on various websites and message boards, Slick produced a lot of really big All Age winners.

I don't know where it came from, but I think Sadie would have made a fine trial dog. I talked with her breeder once (she was another secondhand dog) and was told that most of her littermates had field trial points.

But as easy going as she was around the house, she could be a different dog when you hunted her. She'd do fine for a while, but if she got into birds more than once in a short period of time, (which doesn't happen very often around here) she was gone, and you might spend the rest of the day looking for her. That wasn't the only thing that would send her off and running, but it always did.

(It just occurred to me: I've often read that you only want one bird in a field trial. Is this thing of coming unglued after more than one bird typical of some dogs, or something? )

I bought a shock collar and could control her with it, but I never really liked using it. I was never really comfortable hunting her. Everytime she was out of sight for more than a minute or two, I had to wonder if she was taking off. As I've already said a couple times, Sadie and I were just mismatched.

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Post by slistoe » Mon Nov 12, 2007 1:00 am

I have known a couple of fellows who only wanted one bird with the dog they were running. In general, if you have a quality stake, it will be pretty darn tough to win with only one bird in a 1/2 hour stake.

Over the Hill

Post by Over the Hill » Mon Nov 12, 2007 8:44 am

I'm starting to think that maybe I've spent too much of my life in the company of children. With every new bit of information, my first impulse is to ask “Why?”

But it’s been my experience that once you know “why,” “what” and “how” just seem to come naturally.

I’ve read enough on various message boards to know that there’s a lot of disagreement about almost anything that’s discussed. Of course that’s what keeps these boards interesting. It’s a shame that they so often degenerate into personal battles, because there really is a lot to be learned. Anyway, what you said above about “one bird” not being a general rule sounds good.

I’m getting the feeling that there are some sort of unwritten rules on different boards. Like it appears that here you can mention Pointer x Shorthair crosses, but only if you include one of those little smilies.

I don’t know whether the large numbers of white Shorthairs that we see now days is the result of Pointer breeding :wink: but as Ohiogsp pointed out, the white dogs do get torn up worse than the roan or solid livers.

And for a grouse hunter, that matters, because good grouse cover can be hard on any dog. But when I said “lighter,” I was referring to weight, not color. In greenbriar, grapevines and heavy new growth is usually where we find grouse. It not only tears a dog up, but fighting their way through it will tire a small dog out much more quickly than a somewhat larger one. There was simply no comparing Sadie’s performance to Heidi’s in this kind of cover.

Out in open fields, there didn’t seem to be a lot of difference, but in really rough cover, Sadie was worn out while Heidi was still going strong.

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Post by original mngsp » Mon Nov 12, 2007 9:13 am

Just to chime in the number of finds needed.

If the conditions are decent and a fair numbers of birds have been released or left on course, I feel that a good dog to win should have 2-3 finds.

This number usually insures enough "hunting" time but also I think 2-3 birds handled well with style shows a darn nice dog.

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Post by AHGSP » Mon Nov 12, 2007 9:48 am

Been gone since Thursday at a Trial and to just chime in on the number of finds; the dog that won the Open Gun Dog stake on Friday had 6 perfectly handled finds and moved around the course with such fluidness and smoothness, that it left little doubt who was the best dog that day. As a competitor in that stake, I knew the bar had been set VERY HIGH and nothing less could have won. On another note, that lil Pointer handled like a top and was probably NEVER more that 200 yards out, but always to the front and hitting the objectives. He was a BIRD DOG in every sense of the word, pure and simple.
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Post by Richard *UT* » Tue Nov 13, 2007 12:22 pm

On another note, that lil Pointer handled like a top and was probably NEVER more that 200 yards out, but always to the front and hitting the objectives. He was a BIRD DOG in every sense of the word, pure and simple.
Who was the dog?
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Post by AHGSP » Tue Nov 13, 2007 4:31 pm

Archers Black Powder "Kip", out of last years AKC GDC Covey Up Johny, trained and handled by Jim Heckert.
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