The Outdoors

By Scott Rall, Outdoors Columnist

I have been contemplating a purchase for the past 40 years I would have never considered. My 40-year hunting passion has always been supported by a pack of black labradors. This breed is very versatile and one of the most popular dogs in North America. They perform in uplands and wetlands with great versatility. They love to be loved and all of my dogs live on the living room carpet year around.

I just retired my 12 year and 9-month-old dog Tracer to live out the last months of his life with a 4-year-old and 5-year-old granddaughters’ arms around his neck. He now gets to live the relaxed life. My son Brandon took possession of this dog about 2 months ago. I still get to dog-sit when they are gone. That is very nice.

This leaves me with three top-notch dogs of 11, 9 and 4 years of age. The 11-year-old, Sarge is still going strong but old man time is ticking on his clock as well. He might be able to participate for another year or two and when he retires, I will be down to two. Two might seem like a lot but for a hunter that traverses three-four states a season it will be the smallest number of dogs on my staff in over 40 years.

What a labrador offers in the way of pheasant and waterfowl hunting cannot be matched. What they are really not all that good at is quail hunting. Labradors are flushers. They run back and forth in front of me at about 25 yards. They pick up a scent and follow that scent until we get a bird in the air.

This issue with a flushing dog while quail hunting is that all of your shots end up being long ones. In excess of 50 plus yards in most cases. See, quail won’t sit still for a flushing dog to get close. If my dogs are out in front of me 25 yards and the quail bust 20 yards ahead of them, by the time you get a gun on a quail it is about 50 yards away and those are tough shots even for a pretty good gunner.

Quail are super-fast and fly in all sorts of erratic directions. I have watched more than one hunter stumble into a covey of quail and when the may-lay is over they never fired a shot.

What you need to hunt quail is a pointing dog. These dogs function in a very different way than a flusher. They will scent a bird and freeze solid on a point. I call pointing dogs gentlemen dogs. When they lock up on point, no matter if they are 25 yards away or 100 yards away, the hunter can slowly walk up to the dog, get the sun at your back and the wind in the perfect direction and then release the dog. When the handler releases the dog from the point it will jump into the covey and put the birds in the air. In most cases you would be able to make shots at as little as 10 yards. No quail hunters do this because you reduce your chances of hitting the bird and the ones you did hit would get pretty blown up by the shot pellets.

But a pointing dog allows the hunter to prepare for the flush and offers closer shots in the 20-25 yard range. When you know exactly where the bird is going to originate from you can react quicker and, in most cases, have a considerable higher success rate. Quail tend to sit pretty tight. When pheasant hunting the old cagey roosters will not always hold for a point and will just keep running out ahead of the dog.

My conundrum is hard to figure out. I love the excitement of flushers because you never know when a bird might erupt. If you hunt three dogs at one time the flush can come from any dog at any time. You need to be constantly alert.

Pointing dogs on the other hand give the shooter much more time to get positioned and make better shots from closer ranges. Both dogs have their plusses and minuses and each excel at different things. So, do I get a point dog selected for its attributes at quail hunting which I normally do only about five days per season either in Nebraska or Kansas?

Pointing dogs hunt pheasants great too, but how do you have a pointing breed on a point and then keep my flushing dogs from doing what they do and then just bust in there for a flush regardless if I am ready or not leaving the pointing dog very frustrated.

These are not overwhelming obstacles but ones I will need to figure out before a pointing breed gets to call my home address their own. I have done a lot of pointing dog research and will share some of what I have learned with you next week. Talk to you then!

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If you have any questions, reach out to me at scottarall@gmail.com.