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The Master Thief
Fred Freeze was a genius at training pointing dogs, of a certain sort. Very smart ones, the ones who understood what field trials were all about. Not necessarily the most athletic or naturally talented, but those that could be taught to leverage the talents of a brace mate. And none had been so well suited to Fred Freeze’s methods as Candice, a pointer female who learned tricks from Fred like a circus performer.
The Curse - By Tom Word
Ben and Sam had lived long and seen a lot. Ben practiced law and Sam medicine. But more than that they collaborated on trying to help solve families’ problems.
The Meat Dog - by Tom Keer
No one ever filled up a freezer with grouse and woodcock, and that’s why folks who purse these birds are never considered meat hunters. A whitetail doe or a cow elk, that's called filling the freezer. The cost center procuring the savory grouse or the two small medallions of livery tasting woodcock breasts places the gamebirds on par with truffles, caviar, and tuna. Ours is a whacky pursuit of a foxy local bird and a seasonally migratory bird with an upside-down brain. Go figure.
Worthless Dog? Maybe, Maybe Not
If you are a long-time bird hunter or field trailer you have started and given up on many prospects you judged deficient or worse. This is the story of three such I gave away and that proved more than useful to its donee.
10 ways to kill more grouse
Ruffed grouse are hard to hit in any situation. They’re wild, just like the terrain in which they live. Here are 10 tips to improve your hits. They’re ones I learned the hard way which is short-handle for the fact that I've missed one hell of a lot of birds.
One Who Gave For Us-And Paid A Price
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
Oklahoma is more than OK
Opening Day is the one we wait for all year long. It’s the time when we gather our family and friends, our dogs and favorite shotguns, and trade in every day life for the fields. If we’re lucky, the day falls on a weekend and we don’t need to make special arrangements. But if Opening Day lands during the week, well, then many of us mysteriously get sick. If enough of us bird doggers scrap work then the country’s gross national product might suffer. It'll rebound when we return, but if we miss the opener there is a good chance we won't. Belling dogs and following up points isn't all it’s cracked up to be; it’s much, much more.
The Conflict - By Tom Word
A lawyer fears a conflict of interest like a foot-plowing share cropper fears a kicking mule. And so fear grew in me after on impulse I recommended Sweetie to John Bassett as a grouse dog after his beloved Jill went to her reward. That recommendation put me in jeopardy of losing both my two best friends and best client and principal source of referrals, and my regular quail-hunting partner and key to quail hunting territory.
Tip #1 - Don't post all your ads at the once, spread them out over time.
This is one biggest mistake I see people repeatedly making on the site. I'm all for you posting every single one of your dogs and puppies on Gundog Central, I just think it's a bad idea to dump them all on the site at the exact same time. I see people who have a litter of puppies they want to sell, so they'll post one ad for each puppy ... all on the same day. Great idea, right? It increases your exposure, lets everyone see the different puppies you have and kind of monopolies the front page with just your dogs. Wrong, not only is it poor online etiquette, because it forces a massive amount of other people's classifieds way down the page, but it's just poor, lazy marketing.
Heat Stress: Early Signs and Life-Saving Tactics
Pet owners tend to think of their dogs in human terms. When it's cold, they want to make sure their pets are warm - to the same degree, literally, that they themselves are comfortable. At the Sportsmen's Alliance, we've even seen legislation banning outside dogs when temps drop to 32 degrees.
SportDOG: Gear the way youd design it
My dentist, Doc Biehn, was a waterfowler and I always got to check it out when I got my teeth cleaned as a kid. I remember one visit when he handed me a new, Marlin Super Goose he extracted from his closet. I'd never seen anything like the 10 gauge, bolt action shotgun that took a 3.5 inch shell and came with a two-shell clip and full-choked 34-inch barrel. That beast weighed a whopping 10.5 pounds, making it a virtual shoulder-cannon for waterfowlers. I could barely lift the heavy artillery let alone work the bolt without significant muzzle rock. My amazement turned to confusion, and in the end I couldn't see how that firearm would replace my side-by-side or pump in the blind. The Super Goose must have been designed by someone who didn't hunt geese.
Girls, Guns, and Gun Dogs!
Growing up in the south one gains an appreciation for late fall/early springtime bobwhite quail hunting behind a brace of pointers about as much as anything can be appreciated. The landscape here is dotted with private plantations, public shooting preserves, and small family farms that hold the elusive Gentleman-Bob...opportunities abound. In fact, I cut my gun dog teeth, as it were, training pointing breeds and stumbling around bottom lands I could access hunting quail. It would be some years before I switched my focus over to retrieving breeds entering the world of professional training and trial competition.
A Conspiracy With a Happy Ending
They had been rivals since 1916, the year of the first Yankee Field Trial, that trial held every Presidents Day by the Georgia-Florida Field Trial Club and called by its members (all quail plantation owners) the Owner's Trial. They were three adjoining quail plantations, owned by cousins now, once by siblings, children of the same Cleveland Robber Baron, a coal and iron ore man, fabulously wealthy, who owned them all and called it Heavenfield. Before that assembly, the ground had been owned by a dozen turpentiners and small-patch cotton farmers. They sold for $6 an acre in 1885 to a straw man for the coal and iron ore man.
