FOR A FEW WEEKS IN HIS SECOND SUMMER, Billy hit the terrible twos like a moth hits a windshield—full speed and straight on. He temporarily developed a belief that he did not need me to be involved in the whole “hunting thing” in order for him to get a bird. He was convinced that if he rushed in fast enough, he could catch them himself.
I inadvertently started the problem by taking him to a shooting preserve where we hunted pen-raised pheasants. These were foolish birds and easy marks. At some point in the day, Billy lost his head, rushed in and grabbed a bird before it could fly. Before we left, he did it another time. At that point, a lightbulb went on in his head. He believed he had this hunting thing all figured out—and I was irrelevant to it. He soon became Billy the bird-bumping bonehead, trying my patience for most of the summer.
I spent months of training to try and teach him not to bust his birds. I trained him to whoa reliably with a place board, then began working him with check cords, as the books said—correcting him if he ignored the whoa command and tried to bust a bird. There were plenty of times I got rope burns fighting against his desire to rush in on that bird. Gradually we made progress. It got to where he would reliably whoa on command from a full run. I thought we had it licked. In July, when he was 15 months old, I decided to put his training to the test. I entered him in a walking field trial run by the National Shoot to Retrieve Association. This is a trial format that was created by hunters. In each brace, two dogs work a specific quail-stocked field, roughly 40 acres in size, for a half hour. The dogs are expected to find and point their birds staunchly, and then retrieve to hand after the gunner flushes and shoots the bird. They are judged primarily on the number of birds they point and retrieve, and their style in doing so.
On the day of the trial, scenting conditions were awful. It was early July and the forest was bone dry. The temperature was in the 80s and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Not a drop of rain had fallen for more than three months, and fire restrictions had been in effect since May. The grass was brown and dry, standing stiffly against a hot, dry breeze that felt as though it were coming from a blow dryer. You could almost feel the breeze sucking the moisture out of your body and everything it touched. Every time the hooves of the judges’ horses hit the ground, a cloud of dust would rise to be blown, swirling across the field.
Our brace was scheduled just before lunch, and by the time our turn came, eight experienced dogs had found and pointed only two birds all morning. When the judge blew the whistle and I released Billy, he raced off searching for a bird as though he had been doing this all his life. About five minutes into the brace, Billy locked up on point. My chest swelled with pride as I walked toward him to flush the bird. I congratulated myself that the training had paid off and we had finally put the bird bumping behind us. He looked spectacular on point, the picture of focus and intensity. I thought to myself, Only two birds have been found all morning, and here my dog has found one after just a few minutes. We could win this thing—his very first trial!
Then reality intervened. As I came up to flush the quail, Billy broke his focus on the bird, turned his head, and looked me straight in the eye. If he’d had fingers, he would have been flipping me the middle one. His message was clear, Screw your whoa training, there’s no check cords here. He then turned back, leaped in and busted the bird, and chased it yipping like a toy poodle as it flew out of bounds. It took me a while to call him back and get him hunting again. I could hear some murmuring and snickers from the gallery. I thought, All right, any dog can make one mistake. No reason to worry. He soon found another bird, locked on point—and repeated the same scenario. At this point, he was attracting plenty of amused attention from the crowd, and the chuckles had turned to outright laughter. My face began to turn red from embarrassment.
As it turned out, Billy did this four times during the brace—somehow finding birds in those terrible conditions, stopping and locking up on a beautiful point, holding staunchly until I got near, and then each time flipping me off and busting the bird. I could have strangled him. By the last bird, the crowd was roaring with laughter. As we walked off the field, Billy with a big smile on his face, one of the judges rode up to me and rubbed some salt in the wounds. “You know, you’ve got a pretty nice dog. He found four birds which would have put him in first place if he’d held point. You might want to see about training him.”
Fortunately, Billy’s propensity for busting birds ended in November when we had a chance to hunt wild quail. They soon taught him that he had no chance of catching one all by himself. He redeemed himself by turning into an amazing hunting dog— one of the best I’ve ever seen. His performance in the hunting field became legendary, and he never intentionally busted a bird again. For my part, I never ran him in another field trial.
Dave Gowdey is the author of two books and numerous articles about bird dogs, hunting, and fishing. He currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he is bringing along another promising young German shorthair named Axel.