I’m a one-dog dude. By that, I mean I’ve settled on one breed, not one dog.
My breed is English setters, despite some of the quirks in the setter’s bird dog game. And I’ll always have a dog, even after I age out of bird hunting. During my elderly epoch, if I find myself in need of a pup, I’ll track down a rescue setter.
Even non-hunters would benefit from having a setter around to maintain a warm spot on the couch.
As far as numbers go, I’ve one setter in my pack and that will probably remain so through 2025. I just bought a house that, while quite comfortable, has some rough edges that need attention. I also have some new challenges at work and the chaos of a new puppy is best managed when your to-do list is more manageable.
A year from now, however, I will be actively shopping for another setter. By then, Jade, the lone member of my pack, will be 5 years old and ready for a sidekick.
I’ve another reason to hold off on a puppy for another year. Jade, shockingly, fell to pieces while we hunted quail in California earlier this month and I realized the dog I considered mostly finished needs some work before fall.
In California we found quail in numbers I’ve never seen before and probably won’t ever again. All the focus right now is on fires in California so it’s easy to forget that the previous two winters there were epic monsoon seasons. Quail have spread across the Mojave as if spontaneous generation is an actual thing.
And it was those legions of birds in the relatively sparse cover of the Mojave Desert that exposed a major weakness in Jade’s game.
About 95% of Jade’s experience has been on the Great Plains, hunting bobwhite quail, often in heavy cover. Hunting bobs is a hoot. They hold tight for bird dogs and because of that heavy cover, Jade doesn’t see the birds she is pointing until the flush.
She does her work with her nose.
So, I was surprised when she completely lost her head the first time she got that nose on a covey of 100-plus Gambel’s quail. She never quite settled into a point before the first dozen flushed in front of her. Instead of holding point to let me catch up, she broke into a sprint, chasing the flyers, while busting more quail than I could count..
Keep in mind this dog started backing her elder mentor, Doll, when Jade was five months old, and she’s been solid on point ever since. She also has experience hunting chukar in Wyoming and on California and mountain quail in the southwest, in conditions similar to what we found in the Mojave.
This pattern of busting birds continued throughout the trip. Once Jade saw birds, she forgot her nose and started busting quail with abandon.
She eventually settled down, some, and since there were so many quail, she had plenty of time to point singles and small coveys and we killed plenty of birds.
I’ve seen behavior like this in all my setters. Jack, my first, once pointed a large covey of sharptail, and when it flushed, he chased after the birds so hard he ran straight through another covey without even noticing. But Jack was young then. I thought Jade was pretty much finished and beyond the wild ways of a puppy.
What all that big grass on the plains had obscured was that she isn’t as settled on point as I thought and that she regards “whoa” as less a command and more a suggestion she can disregard when she gets her eye on feathers. She forgot that smell is her superpower, the superpower that makes her my indispensable hunting partner.
So now I know what I’m doing for summer vacay: “whoa” training.