If you’re looking for a family-loving, energetic, highly trainable pet that can also be helpful in the field, a Doodle may be right up your alley. These days, when we hear of the poodle breeds, we may imagine tall, slim, pampered pups with questionable...
The relevant and meaningful question isn’t “Which breed is best for pheasants?” It’s “Which breed is right for me?” No upland gamebird engenders so much disagreement, disputation and plain, unvarnished discord as the ring-necked pheasant. Other gamebirds are rarely...
If you have been around firearms long enough, the chances are good that you have witnessed, committed or even been the unlucky recipient of unsafe hunting practices or careless firearm handling. The cottontail rabbit zig-zagged toward me across the freshly powdered...
Gundog handler and trainer, Jordan Horak, is known as the “dog whisperer” of cocker spaniels, beginning as a young up-and-comer to becoming a national pro. A few years ago— late-October 2015, to be precise—I had the pleasure of hunting woodcock in central...
Sisterhood hunt in western Nebraska raises funds for a local breast health center. Sitting in a pit blind has its drawbacks. The daily scenes of the outdoor world are the greatest thrill of hunting. It’s like a real-life nature film playing out in IMAX 3D right in...
Of all the great moments I’ve laughed about and cried over, one keeps coming back. I’m glad to return to it as a reminder of his endless delight at life. I lost an old friend recently. Lando was as big-hearted as they come, a goer right to the end—a true companion in...
He owned an American water spaniel—the state dog of Wisconsin and one of just a handful of AKC-recognized sporting breeds of North American origin. It’s never a good sign when you begin a day of hunting pacing a veterinary clinic parking lot waiting for the place to...
“In every journey the road will bend. Who can know how the story will wend? To every beginning, there must come an end.” Cliché? Maybe, but profoundly, as inescapable truths that bracket the birth-to-death limits of our being. In the between time, there is...
A symbol of the iconic West, the sage grouse fed pioneers and homesteaders and now provides challenging sport for hunters. It started with a wisp of a Brittany puppy that didn’t weigh much more than a sage grouse. My go-to bird dog, a wonderful, wacky male Brittany...
How many good dogs you gonna bury before one buries you? Blue weighed 90 pounds, with webbed feet big as biscuits, long legs and a deep chest, the biggest Lab bitch I ever saw, out of Tomahawk, Wisconsin, from a kennel of field champions. An undertaker gave her away....
