by Tom Davis | Sep 15, 2020
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...
by Tom Davis | Aug 25, 2020
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...
by Sam Jefferies | Aug 19, 2020
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...
by Jodi Stemler | Aug 6, 2020
It started with a puppy and an adventurous little girl. Every fire needs a catalyst and for me it was that orange-and-white ball of boundless energy and a daughter with an interest. Mesa was not my first Brittany—I’d had two before, but even with dreams of days in...
by Tom Davis | Jul 30, 2020
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...
by Mike Gaddis | Jul 21, 2020
“Wouldn’t it be great?” Kjos said again, his blood up, completely dismissing the ducks, “To have a permanent puppy, to have first love over and over again?” The sun slept in that years-ago Utah morning over the Salt Lake marshes. Where Kjos and I were guests in an...
by Tom Davis | Jul 10, 2020
Two days after winning an 82-dog open all-age stake in the summer of 2016, Labrador retriever Stinger was barely able to walk… We’re all suckers for a comeback story, and one is, of course, Tiger Woods. Crippled by multiple injuries, his career in limbo and his...
by Roger Pinckney | Jun 26, 2020
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....
by Tom Davis | Jun 23, 2020
No dog, to anybody’s knowledge, has done what Heidi did and racked up all the upland birds and all the migratory birds. In the late 1990s, on a beach in Vancouver, British Columbia, George Calef’s eye was caught by a smallish chocolate Lab. The dog was...
by Jameson Parker | Jun 16, 2020
If you want a gundog that can do everything very well in open field or woodland or water, and then be a mellow member of the household, consider the pudelpointer. The revolutions of 1848 were a series of spontaneous and uncoordinated uprisings that began in France and...
