From the March/April 2006 issue of Sporting Classics.
Texas is pointer country. Always has been and, as long as there are birds to hunt and field trials to run, always will be. When you say “bird dog” in Texas, it‘s understood you mean “pointer,” just as when you say “bird,” it’s understood you mean “bobwhite quail.” Again, it’s been this way since the dawn of time, which Texans date to 1836.
Everything is bigger in Texas, of course (as any Texan will tell you), which is why it takes a whole lotta dog to get the job done there. And when you start listing the qualities a bird dog needs to cut it in the Lone Star State—the speed, drive and range to cover those vast pastures and reach to distant mottes; the desire, stamina and sheer toughness to withstand heat and thorns and jagged rocks and the whole withering gauntlet thrown up by the terrain and climate—you’re describing the pointer to the proverbial T. No other breed, considered in its entirety, comes close.
You might even say that the pointer is the distillation, in canine form, of all things Texan.
When a setter pokes its head out, you can bet the farm it’s a damn good one.
You might say—thatbut you wouldn’t be quite right. You’ve forgotten to account for one of the defining aspects of the Texas character: the mile-wide streak of ornery independence that impels Texans to go against the grain no matter if it’s running favorably, unfavorably, or somewhere in-between. It’s as if they’re born with a maverick gene. The title of a recent effort from alt-country troubadour Ray Wylie Hubbard sums it up nicely: “Screw You, We’re From Texas.”
So while it may be pointer country, there’s a long tradition of great Texas setters as well. Johnny Crockett, to name one. They’ve always been distinctly in the minority, but like minorities in any field of endeavor they’ve had to be that much better just to get their due. When a Texas quail hunter opens a box on his dog trailer (all Texas quail hunters seem to pull dog trailers) and a setter pokes its head out, bits of golden straw clinging to its silky ears, you can bet the farm it’s a damn good one. It has to be.
This goes double in field trials. To win in Texas, a setter not only has to beat the competition—and do it convincingly—it has to shatter the stereotypes: that setters don’t have enough “run”; that setters can’t take the heat; that setters lack drive and stamina; that when you measure setters against pointers by any yardstick the longhairs come up short.
With all this as the back story, you can understand why the record compiled by E.J. Hall and his dogs, campaigned under the Smokin’ Setters banner, is so honest-to-Jim Bowie impressive. A semi-retired electrician from Gunter, Texas (about fifty miles north of Dallas), Hall has competed successfully in field trials for over twenty years—his first big winner, Smokin’ Buzz, racked up some sixty placements—but since the late-1990s he’s been swinging a serious whup-ass stick. His setters have consistently blistered the opposition, winning everything in sight on the walking, amateur horseback, and National Bird Hunters Association (NBHA) circuits. They’ve also won the respect, grudging though it may be, of even the most entrenched pointer diehards.
In fact, Hall’s beginning to suspect that some of his competitors are ducking him, avoiding the trials he’s likely to run and entering the ones he’s likely not to. There may be no higher compliment—and if it doesn’t tell you what kind of stuff his setters are made of, I don’t know what will.
Not too shabby for a dog Hall describes as “kind of the runt.”
Just to give you an idea of the roll they’re on, in December 2004 Hall swept the Region 7 Amateur Walking Shooting Dog Championship, with Smokin’ Stan awarded the title and Smokin’ Gringo named runner-up. Stan continued to lead the way in 2005, earning two runner-up championships in as many weeks late last fall and icing the cake with a win at the NBHA Joe Eden Classic.
“When Stan’s on his game,” says Hall of the forty-pound, five-year-old fireball, “he’s awfully hard to beat.”
While Stan has the whole package, including spine-tingling style on point and eye-catching animation on the ground, his strong suit, without a doubt, is his ability to find birds. “Even when they’re scarce,” allows Hall, “he digs ’em up.”
It’s not uncommon, Hall says, for Stan to notch multiple finds on a course that other dogs have just hunted without finding a single bird. At an NBHA stake not long ago, he tallied the astonishing total of thirteen productive points in an hour. Not too shabby for a dog Hall describes as “kind of the runt” of a litter sired by the first of his dogs to win a championship, Smokin’ Jigsaw.
But then, if there’s one criterion by which Hall determines which dogs to keep and which to let go, it’s what he calls “that knack for finding birds.” It’s been that way since the early 1970s, when Hall, who began bird hunting relatively late in life at the age of 29 (he’s now 64), fell in with another well-known Texas setter man, Harold Ellis. Ellis had a dog named Andy Capp that was, says Hall, “The best bird dog I ever saw.”
He came by his talent naturally, having been sired by Commander’s Jet Stream, the last of the legendary Commander setters bred and campaigned by Carl Duffield and his son, Carl Jr. The Commanders were bird-finders to a fault, so consumed by their desire in this respect that it frequently eclipsed such minor considerations as listening to their handler (or even staying in the same time zone), remaining steady to wing and shot, etc.
They were also famed for their remarkable stamina and toughness—desirable qualities anywhere, but indispensable in Texas. Starting with a son of Andy Capp’s named Buddy Capp, Hall patiently developed his line, keeping and breeding only the few that met his standards (“I’m more critical of my dogs than anyone,” he says), building on the Commander foundation with infusions of blood from two of the top setters of the late-’70s/early ’80s, Grouse Ridge Billyboy and Amos Mosley. He caught the field trial bug along the way (it was inevitable), and in Smokin’ Buzz, Smokin’ Jigsaw, and Smokin’ Stan—grandfather, father and son, respectively—he now boasts three generations of setters who’ve proved they can hold their own, and then some, in the fastest company.
Oh, and if it occurs to you that all of Hall’s dogs are males, there’s a reason for that. “I do not get along,” he admits, “with setter females.”
And while he’s quick to acknowledge the contributions of several professional trainers to his dogs’ success over the years, notably Tip Davis (who has since left the professional ranks), he does the majority of their training himself. And he does all the handling in field trials.
“I’m not a wealthy man,” Hall says, “but I do put a lot of money into my dogs. And I get no kick out of watchin’ a pro trainer handle ’em.”
So what do the pointer guys say when Hall and his setters put another Texas-sized whuppin’ on them?
“Whaddya think they say?” Hall laughs. “They don’t say nothin’.”
Where there’s smoke . . . +++
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