Gundog Training Forum

Can someone tell me the use of a bell on a dog? I have heard of people putting them on cats to prevent them from catching birds. But why on earth would anyone want a dog to wear one?

If you're hunting a pointing dog through woodland or heavier cover then the bell helps you keep tabs of the progress of the dog when it is unsighted. If it stops ringing then you know it's on point & roughly where it might be. Not perfect but goes back to the days before Bleeper & GPS collars & still common in Europe.

Naj

Ah. Ok. Would drive me nuts though.

On the Setter front. There is a resurgence of Setters here. Some fantastic working dogs being produced over the last few years by some dedicated Setter folk. Great to see.

I've read of Americans claiming 500 - 1000 yards out hunting distances for their pointing dogs. I can only say that if I had a dog that hunted at anything like that sort of range it wouldn't be my dog any more ! My Brittany does hunt at 2-300 yards sometimes and Charlie (Cuda) has told me she has been as much as 500 yards out on a snipe moor.( I thought it was about 400.)
That's far too much for my liking, I get knackered walking just 100 yards to a point. The Brittany just does what pointing dogs are supposed to do. If no game is within "easy" distance from me then she hunts further out to find some. It's what keen pointing dogs do and the dog needs to be "on" the turn and recall whistle in order to control this.

Wullie

Hi Wullie.

I think it depends on the areas that are hunted. The dog should adapt accordingly. In some areas we hunt in, a dog that only goes 300m is not going to be productive, and will be better suited to thicker cover. It's a case of "horses for courses". A dog that doesn't get out to those sort of distances is not going to be of any use in the open spaces where covey's can be 500-1000m or further apart. Certainly in a trail situation, dogs like that will just get outplayed by the bigger running dogs with more stamina.

Some American strains are bred specially for horse back trials where they range over huge distances whereas others are bred for the foot hunter & range within reasonable range. There's also an issue with independence in this because the wide ranging strains are more independent & arguably too much so for the foot hunter. I also think there is a tendency to over estimate range, the same happens with length of retrieves. The problem with distances even out to 300 yards or so, apart from the possibility of becoming unsighted of the dog & having to search around for it before being able to make in to the point, is that it often takes so long for you to reach the dog on point that birds might not hold long enough for you to get within shotgun range, and either flush early or sneak away under the point. Not so bad when working inexperienced young birds at the beginning of a season but such birds quickly become educated. Even so, I'd never restrict range because of this & generally leave the dog to sort range out for itself, ensuring that no big areas are missed by a change in my own direction of travel to compensate.

Naj

Just cross posting with you SP, but what distances are your big running dog's ranging out over? A 300 yard cast produces a 600 yard beat, which is quite a sizeable area for most in the UK. I've got a fair bit of (small) moorland but would be hard pressed to find areas where a dog could cast out across a thousand yard front, say. And at 300 yards I often have trouble spotting a liver or black dog against the heather even with a fluo-orange collar. The American Horse back trailers keep up with GPS & fast horse but not so easy for a foot hunter.

In these days of gps it's no longer a case of guesswork on distances. 800m, and I've seen further, is not unusual in the open grasslands to the east. 300-500m is probably average closer to home. It doesn't take too long for dogs to adapt once they get into open country.

Presumably these are pointers & setters? My experience is with GSPs. My late season cock pheasants would still not hold until I got there most of the time even if a dog did get a point 500 yards out.

Mostly Pointers and Setters. There are some pretty big running GSP's out here though as well.

The Greywing Partridge which are hunted in those parts are exceptional at sitting tight and are glorious to hunt with pointing dogs.

In America pointing dogs are often expected to run to "objectives" ....patches of likely game holding cover. This means that 500 yard cast range dog isn't actually covering a 1000 yard beat.
Doing this makes sense to me if a dog is hunting vast spaces which probably holds no game at all. It conserves the dog's energy. I have a feeling that many of these big running dogs are primarily "covey" dogs and that they probably do miss a few single birds because they do not hunt what we would call a pattern.

I agree that a dog should greatly cut back on it's range when hunting woodlands. I got chucked out of my first ever HPR trial (held in woodlands) because my Brittany who was really only accustomed to partridge fields and grouse moors did not cut back her range nearly enough to please the judges. The judges complained that they could only see her when she whizzed past once in every 86 years like Haile's comet !

Wullie