Tur Bo in front on point Dolly behind honoring
Luke
Let me preface this with, I don’t have a clue about how dogs smell birds. I have read a couple of books that are supposed to enlighten the reader on how it happens but at the end the writer doesn’t know any more than I do but he got my money for the book.
Bill Tarrant wrote several really good books on dogs and dog training. In one of them he talks about a border patrol dog that alerted to a small amount of marijuana that was hidden in a semi load of onions. Some way the dogs nose shut out what wasn’t important and zeroed in on the marijuana.
My son-in-law, Robert Charpie, had a Brittany that got sprayed in the face by a skunk. Ginny was close enough to the skunk that it left a green streak between her eyes. (It’s hard to want to put a dog that smells like that back into the dog box.) She threw up a time or two but within a few minutes we had a covey of birds spread out and she pointed singles. The way she smelled, I don’t see how she could point quail but she did.
Back in the seventies, when there were a lot of quail, I had a young dog by the name of Scamp. I had just read Richard Wolters book and I got him on his 49th day. I don’t think getting them that young is a good idea now but it worked for him. A friend, who had a young pointer, and I were hunting near Holden, Missouri. We came through a grassy area with scattered trees and both dogs were right in front of us. Scamp threw his head into the air and started stalking toward a hedge row about 250 yards from us. The pointer didn’t seem to notice anything. Scamp stalked the 250 yards with his head and tail up. When he got to the hedge row he went on point. I wish I could remember which way the wind was blowing or whether it had any effect. All I remember was that there was a covey of quail in front of him. At this time Scamp was less than a year old.
Another time we had the same 2 dogs down and they were running down a hedge row side by side bumping shoulders as young dogs like to do. Scamp was on the outside with the pointer next to the hedge row and Scamp slid to a point. The pointer went on down the hedge row. When we got there we flushed a covey in front of him. Was Scamp breathing in and the pointer breathing out when they hit the scent cone? Did Scamp just have a better nose? I don’t know.
Several years ago I belonged to a hunting club that leased land in Kansas and Missouri. I was hunting an eighty acre place that was 1/4 mile deep and 1/2 mile wide. I parked on the north west corner. This field was plowed but not all the way to the edge. It had a strip about 15 yards wide, of grass, that went along the road to the east. I turned Lucky’s sire, Pal and another dog out. Pal started down the grass strip to the east. About 50 yards down the grass strip he whirled to the south and started stalking. He stalked all the way across the plowed field to a hedge row on the south side and went on point. There was a covey of quail in front of him. He had stalked for almost 1/4 mile and pointed quail. He didn’t go back and forth. He went straight to them. How did he know?
I guide at Bird Fever Hunting Preserve in Richmond, Missouri. We were going over the field for the second time on a day with the wind coming from the north east pretty strong. I saw Dolly go on point, looking to the south west. The wind was hitting her right in the butt. I figured as hard as the wind was blowing she was looking the wrong way. I kicked around behind her but she didn’t turn her head. She kept looking to the south west. I walked in front of her kicking and nothing flushed. I went back and tapped her head and she moved up about 5 yards. She went back on point and I started kicking the cover. Finally, I got way out in front and said “okay”. She passed me, went all the way to the fence and picked up a dead chukar. With the wind from behind her, how did she smell it?
On my training grounds I have swirling winds, sometimes, and dogs point opposite of where I think they will but all of the above cases were extreme. You can’t blame swirling winds for these.
Over the next few days I will probably remember other times that the dogs noses surprised me but I just wanted to relate these stories and maybe get people to realize what an amazing thing a dogs nose is.