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Don’t Lose Your Birds
Almost every bird hunter has experienced the desperate disappointment of losing a downed bird. We all have had to walk away. It is not a good feeling when a bird is lost. Whether using dogs or not, knowing that a bird has been shot and the feeling of being unable to locate it is unnerving.
Booty Blevins and Marvin Means
It was 1946. The War was finally over, and Booty was back in Alabama after duty as a duce-and-a half driver and then infantryman at the Battle of the Bulge, mustering out as a corporal. Before the War, he had worked as a hand on Mr. Maytag's quail plantation at Union Springs. The washing machine maker had loved to shoot quail. Booty had helped Mr. George Hardin train his bird dogs and retrievers and the horses ridden by those involved in the hunts or pulling the hunt wagon.
C-C-C-Cold-Weather Canine Care
Our October and November waterfowl hunts weren’t anything to write about. Air temps north of us hovered between 70-and-82 degrees Fahrenheit, and with all of that open water those birds weren’t in a hurry to go anywhere. A bone-chilling cold snap rolled in just before Christmas, and it spanned half of the East Coast from Canada to Maryland. The season’s entire migration seemed to arrive all at once.
Charger
A good dog is hard to find. A great one, once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky.
Read Your Dog
Just because a gun dog can’t speak doesn’t mean he’s not saying anything. Reading the dogs’ body language is key for elevating performance levels, so here are some things pro trainers look for when they cut loose their string.
My Invention
I have always been blessed with just the right amount of intelligence to get neck deep into something, but never enough intelligence to get out successfully. This was one of those occasions. It involves two bird dog bitches and a dummy, me.
Losing It
Harry Bain had been an all-age for-the-public pointing dog trainer-handler for thirty years. In that role he had lived in south Alabama, trained trial and hunting dog's mid-July through mid-September in North Dakota and traveled the major all-age trial circuit September through mid-March. Summers he had fished the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere until the last week of June when he readied for the trip north.
How much to puppies sell for?
I’ll occasionally get a phone call, text or email from someone asking how much money they should be asking for their puppies when listing them on Gundog Central. I have a ton of data that I’ve collected on dog prices over the years and decided to put together this quick list showing the average list price for puppies, by breed. I’ve also looked at the trending data for the past five years to see if puppy prices were rising or falling, but didn’t see a lot of movement for the most popular breeds. Below you’ll find the median list price for puppies, broken down by breed, over the past year. These are puppy prices only, it does not include started or finished dogs.
Tick Check
When it comes to ticks, the only thing you need to know is that they should be avoided at all costs. Nothing good comes from an association with a tick. They’ll latch on to you, your dog, your wife and kids, your horses, and anything else they can sink their grubby meat hooks into. Diseased ticks can leave you sick for the rest of your life.
DOVES: From the Field, to Cleaning, to Eating
It’s that time of the year when we find ourselves gathered with family, friends, and strangers positioned around a cut grain or sunflower field waiting for those September gray birds to come screaming in. Dogs will sit idly by, panting as they await anxiously for doves to be interrupted in midflight with shot. As the first flight comes in, a barrage of gunfire will thunderously erupt, signaling that hunting season has arrived. Dove hunters will instantly feel the excitement by the heat of expended shotshells, yells from strangers saying “Comin’ at ya!”, and the sweat running down backs and necks as sun rays pour from the blue sky as summer still holds on tightly.
Building the Foundation at Any Age
Most of us know that the best training comes from starting early in a dog’s life. Getting that young pup chasing tennis balls down the hallway is the best way to get that future Master Hunter started on the retrieving journey. But what do we do if the dog we get is a little older, two or three years old, and other than “sit” and playing fetch in the backyard, they have no formal retrieving skills? They are solid with those very basic things, but with no formal training.
A Dread Problem and a Solution
Sam Teel and Booty Blevins had been partners ten years, never had a fight. They argued some about how to fix a problem, but each knew that was healthy. They didn't make much money, but loved what they did for a living, training and handling pointing dogs on the field trial circuit.
Lt. Colonel Robert Milner, Jr., Rest in Peace
On July 14, 2024, the retriever world lost a titan with the passing of Lt. Col. Robert Milner, Jr., USAF, Ret.. Milner’s final battle was fighting amyloidosis, a rare liver disease. He was 79 years old.
Twice Bitten
For a fourteen-year-old, truth can be illusive. In many cases it’s hard to sort out and in other instances it’s just as plain as the nose on your face. I do know one thing that was true; it was well into November, and it hadn’t rained in Amite County since July. The farmers had fed out all their hay and were hoping to get winter rye into the ground before the December frosts, but they needed a rain.
Holes and Rules
"Every dog has got a hole, and his handler has to hide it," was a truism in the world of bird dog field trials.
