Book Review
One day last fall my friend Dave and I visited a couple of Dave’s coverts in central Vermont. My springer, Caillie, worked back and forth between us. When she flirted at the edge of gunning range, I whistled for her to Hup (Sit) until we moved up. She showed too much north-south in her pattern and not enough east-west, which always has been a problem for her (and, by extension, me), but in general she worked calmly, thoroughly and effectively.
I saw her hit scent and start to thrash the honeysuckle. When she put up the bird, the grouse flew downhill toward where I’d last seen Dave. I yelled, “Bird!” and, alerted, Dave bagged himself a hen. Later he commented on how well Caillie had worked. I told him, “Yup, just buy a springer out of trials breeding, train her, let her get to be 12 years old and you’ll have a dog that’s almost comfortable to hunt behind.”
Dogs add so much to hunting that it’s hard to imagine what it would be like to weave through one’s coverts without a canine helper. Following are two books extolling dogs (imperfect though they may be), a thoughtful training guide (wish I’d read it before I started training Caillie) and a work on shotguns and shooting.
Labradors
By Nick Ridley (Quiller, distributed by Stackpole Books, 800-732-3669, www.stackpolebooks.com; 2008) 136 pp. $29.95.
This large-format hardcover is published in England, but Americans will respond to its fine color photos of Labs at work, rest and play. After pho-tographing dogs for more than 25 years, the author found he had close to 40,000 images of Labs in his archive. From them he has chosen a range of shots that demonstrate the ver-satility of this popular breed.
As well as being a fulltime professional photographer of dogs, Ridley is the Gundog Editor at Sporting Shooter Magazine. He divides his book into three sections. “Working Labs” shows chocolate, black, yellow and even black-and-tan Labs fetching hares, pheasants, red grouse and waterfowl and showing their athleticism and determination while clearing fences, working cover and making water and land retrieves. Section two, “The Versatile Lab,” depicts dogs negotiating agility courses. Section three, “That Special Look,” presents photos showing the particular expression “that just sums up the dog’s personality,” which, as a pro often hired by dog owners to make portraits of their Labs, Ridley strives to capture.
There’s a touching section on older dogs, those gray-muzzled veterans whose knowing, accepting expressions tug at our heartstrings. The puppy photos are predictably winsome but no less appealing for that. In the text the author explains how he uses various techniques, including pre-focusing on an area to catch a dog clearing an obstacle or catching a ball. There are even some unusual shots of a Lab doing “Man Work”: pursuing and apprehending a man posing as “a violent offender.” How’s that for versatility?
Retriever Training: A Back-to-Basics Approach
By Robert Milner (Globe Pequot, 800-962-0973, www.globepequot.com; 2000) 198 pp. $14.95.
Although this book was published almost a decade ago, we somehow missed it. Fortunately, author Robert Milner recently handed a copy to SSM Associate Editor Ed Carroll, who passed it on to me. The book is still available from the publisher, and it’s such a fine guide that it would be a shame not to (belatedly) make readers aware of it.
Milner lives in Somerville, Tennessee, where he owns and operates Duck Hill Kennels. A retired Air Force colonel, he has worked with dogs for almost 40 years. He prefers English Labs to those from American field-trial breeding because the former are calmer in temperament, tend to be better natural retrievers and are decidedly easier to train than the hard-charging performers our trials system rewards.
Milner correctly asserts: “The community of dog experts should be promoting the selective breeding of a dog that the average hunter can train, and enjoy. We should not be breeding a dog with a bundle of genetically transmitted behavioral tendencies that make him difficult to train into a good working dog. The average hunter should not have to get a Ph.D. in dog training in order to come up with a dog that is pleasant to hunt with and pleasant to live with.” Milner has studied canine dominance behavior and pack dynamics. He understands that obedience, based on the dog acknowledging that the trainer is boss, remains the foundation of training for the duck marsh, the pheasant slough and the grouse tangle. In molding his dogs Milner employs gentle but consistent techniques—as soon as a problem crops up, he doesn’t grab for the electronic collar, an all-too-common response in American training programs these days. He notes, “You do not have to give Pup a training session every day. However, you must maintain the appropriate relationship all the time. You must be the pack leader.”
Chapters include “The Top Ten Practices that Interfere with Training,” “Learning to Speak ‘Dog’” and “Obedience as a Way of Life,” as well as others on teaching marked and blind retrieves, introducing dogs to guns and decoys, and advanced water work. The book isn’t limited to retrievers, as I found much application for Milner’s techniques in my work with spaniels. Pointing dogs are a somewhat different kettle of fish, but a lot of Milner’s advice applies to them as well. In fact, anyone owning a dog would benefit from reading this lucid, reasoned work.
Shotguns and Shooting Three
By Michael McIntosh (Shooting Sportsman Books, 800-685-7962, www.shootingsportsman.com; 2008) 240 pp. $25.
You may have read these essays—or parts of them—in the pages of SSM. Which doesn’t mean they aren’t every bit as entertaining and enlightening when presented in book form. Michael McIntosh is simply one of the ablest scholars of and writers about shooting and shotguns. Witness his earlier works, including Best Guns, A.H.Fox: The Finest Gun in the World, The Gun Review Book, Shotguns and Shooting and More Shotguns and Shooting.
His new book is nothing if not diverse. It includes chapters about the earliest shotguns and their subsequent evolution; hammerguns and how to use them; the renaissance of the 28 gauge; chamber lengths; “Learning to Read” (“It’s as important for a shooter as for a schoolchild. The shooter has to learn how to read a flight line”); and “Paralysis by Analysis,” on why you shouldn’t think too much, or at least too long, when trying to bust a clay or interrupt a gamebird’s flight.
I enjoy an evening spent perusing old columns from England’s Shooting Times written by the late Gough Thomas and collected in book form. Michael McIntosh is our American equivalent: insightful and a craftsman with words.
Reverse Points
By Nancy Anisfield (Ugly Dog Hunting, 877-982-7054, www.uglydoghunting.com; 2008) 84 pp. $29.
Sharp color photos and spicy humor enliven this large-format softcover. The work, subtitled “Bird Dogs Reconsidered,” reveals the “darker side of bird dogs,” the “other gun dog reality” that is “rarely discussed.”
Author Nancy Anisfield lives in Vermont and hunts avidly with dogs of three breeds: German shorthaired pointers, German wirehaired pointers and Chesapeake Bay retrievers. She and her husband, Terry Wilson, own the Ugly Dog Hunting Co. (think: wirehairs) and sell wingshooting gear for humans and canines. Anisfield contributes the bulk of the writing and photos in this book. In an introduction she cites “cosmic truths” about hunting dogs: “If it’s smelly, we roll in it. If it can be upchucked at 3 AM, we eat it. Porcupines should be chomped, snakes should be tossed, and by all means, if there’s a hornet’s nest in a rock wall, we darn well need to excavate.” Tales of this ilk rather than glossy memoirs concerning “staunch points, tireless retrieves and noble hunting partners” are the mainstay here.
Other contributors are Alan Liere of Washington, Michael Halleran of Kansas, Matt Crawford of Vermont, Jon Bronsdon of Wisconsin and Tom Parmelee of Washington. The 28 pieces range from tongue-in-cheek reminiscences to gross tales to poems, including the epic “Hunting with Poe”: “In deepest covert O! Despairing, while I lumbered weak and swearing,/crashing headlong into brush and thorny spear,/While I blasphemed, nearly weeping, suddenly there came a beeping,/A reassuring techno-peeping, cheeping in my frozen ear.”
Several stories are written from a dog’s point of view (regarding e-collars and what a male dog might do if braced with a female in estrus during an important field trial). We read of English pointers locking up on rattlesnakes, dogs providing aggravation and embarrassment in coverts and during hunt tests, and logs of trips to bird hunting destinations from New Brunswick to Georgia. Dark humor, fun reading.
- By: Charles Fergus
