Posted in DOGS on Mar 20th, 2012
Bird hunters have always cross-bred dogs with the hopes of creating better four-legged companions. The Braque Français is a perfect example of this process. In Craig Koshyk’s superb book Pointing Dogs: Volume One, The Continentals, he explains how hunters modified this breed and developed two types of pointing dogs with a shared ancestry and the [...]
Posted in ENJOYING BOTH on Mar 14th, 2012
Salem is Oregon’s state capital. Located about 50 miles south of Portland, this city of 155,000 people and miles of sprawl was a tiny town 100 years ago. As you would expect, the hunting around there was a lot different back then. Salem sits like a bull’s eye on Oregon’s Willamette Valley–ground zero for the [...]
Posted in ENJOYING BOTH on Mar 9th, 2012
Guy De La Valdene is easy to envy. He has spent his life fishing and hunting, has owned a quail plantation in Florida, and has life-long friendships with guys like Jim Harrison and Russel Chatham. Valdene also writes, and when he does, he’s good enough at it to give me another reason to be jealous of [...]
Posted in DOGS on Mar 2nd, 2012
Even though people have been using pointing dogs for over 400 hundred years, the early history of these animals is tough to make out. To this day, people are still wondering how these dogs were used to hunt game. One theory is that pointing dogs were used to mark game that was then netted by [...]
Posted in ENJOYING BOTH on Feb 23rd, 2012
Sorry I’ve been away for a while. I was having such a good run on posts. Then work got in the way: big projects, too much to do, not enough time in the week. You know the drill. Anyway, Puck and I managed to slip away last Saturday for some time in the field. We [...]
Posted in DOUBLES on Feb 14th, 2012
As the 19th century ended, the shooting world was winding up 100 years of change. In 1800, muzzle loading flintlocks had ruled the field. Then in 1839, percussion guns took over, followed by breech loaders and then centerfire hammerguns. By 1885, these hammerguns were out and self-cocking, hammerless doubles were in. While the new hammerless [...]
Posted in ENJOYING BOTH on Feb 5th, 2012
I came across this video the other day on Youtube. The clip is from a quail preserve in Tennessee. From what I can see, the place puts hunters into lots of birds. It also has some dogs that really know how to find those birds and retrieve them. But here’s what bothers me: The dogs are [...]
Posted in ENJOYING BOTH on Jan 28th, 2012
I saw this on a great blog called Uplandbirdhunter.com. Check it out. I’m sure you could use the same technique to a grouse. OF course, you need to do something with those quail once they’re cleaned. You could even bring the ingredients along with you and do this in the field: Enjoy. www.dogsanddoubles.com
Posted in DOGS on Jan 13th, 2012
The English Pointer lays claim to ancestors throughout Europe. Dogs from Spain are said to be the beginning of the breed, and an earlier version of the modern Portugese Pointer probably added a few bricks to the EP’s foundation. Portugese Pointers can be traced back to the 18th century and today, these hard hunting, short haired [...]
Posted in ENJOYING BOTH on Jan 12th, 2012
I’ve always been told that grouse switch to Aspen buds as cold winter moves in and the ground freezes up. This string over at Upland Journal proves that that’s not the whole story. Some bird’s diets are a bit more diverse. The bird was shot in late December. Check out the content of it’s crop [...]
