Hunting Turkeys, Ducks, Geese, Pheasants, and Quail With Bird Dogs

Bear Attack Leads Florida Woman to Stolen Champion Hound

Online Editors — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:13:21 -0500

by Chad Love

A Florida woman whose champion Plott hound was stolen and sold to an unwitting bear hunter now has her dog back, thanks to that hunter's honesty and a bad encounter with an angry bear.

From this story on jacksonville.com:

The frightening picture gave Joi Hosker both hope and despair. Hope because it meant her champion show dog had been found. Despair because it showed him hooked up to IVs and near death after being attacked by a bear. For eight fruitless months, she had searched for George, her Plott hunting dog whose registered name is “Hosker’s Georgie Boy.” It’s a lost-and-found story with a tall “tail” of an ending.

"...In late 2009, Hosker boarded George with a hunter/trainer in Columbia County while she traveled to Lake Charles, La., to visit her seriously ill mother and her husband was out of town on a job. When she returned home after her mother’s death, Gary Hosker broke the news that he feared George might be dead. The kennel owner had told him George had escaped.

Can You Put a Price Tag on Hunting With Your Gun Dog?

Online Editors — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:48:57 -0500

by Chad Love

There was an interesting article last month in a Texas A&M University publication called Agrilife Today, which sought to put a monetary value on the bobwhite quail.

The Best Field & Stream Reader Photos From January 2012

Dave_Maccar — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:06:52 -0500

Each month, Field & Stream editors review the hundreds of photos submitted by readers to our Trophy Room. If your photo is chosen to be printed in the Game Faces section of the magazine, you’ll win a Rapala Fish ‘N Fillet knife!

Submit your photos here!

Here are the monthly Best Reader Photo Galleries from last year:

Dog is Only Cure for 13-Year-Old with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

Sarah Smith — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:37:08 -0500

--Chad Love

Anyone who's ever owned or been around them knows that dogs are a Swiss army knife for the soul. No matter what's troubling you, no matter how bad things are, or how bad they may get, the presence of a dog just seems to make things better. How do they do it?

Who knows, but if Big Pharma could somehow extract, replicate and synthesize into pill form, the effect of a dog's love on the human soul, it would immediately render all other forms of therapy and treatment obsolete.

But they haven't, thankfully, which is why we still have stories like this one from the New York Times Magazine about a young boy suffering from the effects of fetal alcohol syndrome and the dog that helped him when nothing else could.

Learn How Traps Work: It Could Save Your Dog's Life

Sarah Smith — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:34:55 -0500

--Chad Love

There are any number of things that can go wrong, sometimes horribly, when we take our dogs into the field. They can run through a fence and get torn up, run through a cattle guard or hole and break a leg, run into a porcupine or skunk, inhale dangerous seeds, get bitten by a snake, trampled by a cow, run over by a car, get overheated, dehydrated or completely lost, the list is pretty much endless in terms of potential dangers.

All you can do is take it on faith that those things won't happen while hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. That's why most of us do things like carry first-aid kits on all our hunting trips and plugging the phone numbers of local vets into our cell phones.

But here's one more thing that every one of us should familiarize ourselves with: what to do if one of our dogs gets caught in a body-gripping trap. Here's an absolutely heartbreaking story from last week's Minneapolis Star-Tribune about a rash of dogs dying in traps.

From the story:

Doug Snyder won't forget the day he loaded a .22 rifle and shot his dog at point-blank range. He and his two teenage sons were walking along a forest road near their cabin east of Hinckley in late December when Polka Dot, their 9-year-old setter-Lab mix, suddenly howled in distress. Bolting headlong into the woods, Snyder found his dog 60 yards away with its head and neck caught in a deadly body-gripping trap. "She was standing there, bleeding from the snout," he said. Frantically, Snyder and his 16-year-old son struggled to free their pet before it suffocated. But two powerful springs held the trap's jaws tightly closed. "We fought like hell to get it off, and we couldn't," he said. "She was melting away."

New Gear for Waterfowl, Turkey and Upland Bird Hunting in 2012

Online Editors — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:25:15 -0500

While the SHOT Show has taken a tactical shooting turn, there are still some great products for bird hunters. Here are the best gear items we found this year.

National Pheasant Fest and Quail Classic: A Hunting Expo Worth Attending

Sarah Smith — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:11:51 -0500

by Chad Love

The noted French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once famously opined that “Hell is other people.” As a lifelong misanthrope, I’ve found that little gem to be not only a great way to kill conversation at dinner parties, but a wholly satisfying life philosophy. It’s not that I don’t like people; it’s just that I try to avoid large numbers of them at all costs.

So when the website informed me that I would be attending SHOT this year with some 65,000 of my closest friends, and that I would even be allowed to wander the show floor unsupervised, I questioned the decision as either a gracious but misguided act of charity or the result of a lost bet.

I took pains to point out to my editors that in matters of tact, wit and other social graces I’m roughly on par with Bat Boy from the Weekly World News. I reminded them, too, that, frankly speaking, I prefer the company of dogs to outdoor industry types, and that as a preferred destination for the third week in January I’ll take a CRP field in Kansas over Las Vegas, Nevada, oh, about ten times out of ten.

End-of-Season Reflections: Looking Back and Ahead

Sarah Smith — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:38:42 -0500

by Chad Love

It's always been hard for me, as a bird hunter, to get very reflective around New Year's, simply because most upland and waterfowl seasons are still in high gear. But as we inexorably creep toward February, that starts changing. This is the time of year when waterfowl and upland seasons begin to wind down for many of us, which I think is as good a time as any to reflect on the past year and look toward the next.

For me, this past weekend marked the end of duck season, and in about three weeks I'll no longer be able to walk mile after fruitless mile in vain pursuit of the bobwhite quail, a bird which I'm told is rumored to inhabit this area. Of course, I've also been told leprechauns inhabit this area, too, and I haven't seen any of them, either.

The Best Shotguns of 2012

Dave_Maccar — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:56:43 -0500

Oldest Dog in the World Dies at 26...er...24...25?

Sarah Smith — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:33:26 -0500

by Chad Love

Apologies for the lack of blog posts last week, but I was attending the SHOT show in Las Vegas. I did manage to survive the experience, so look for a new gundog and wingshooting product web gallery soon. In the meantime, sad news from the world of canine centenarians: Uncle ChiChi has died. Who the hell is Uncle ChiChi, you ask? Hey, I didn't know either, but he was absolutely, positively, perhaps, might have been, the oldest dog in the world.

From the New York Times:

Uncle Chichi, a toy poodle whose unusual longevity led to fame and an appearance on “Good Morning America,” died on Tuesday after a yearlong battle with cancer. He was 26. Or 24. Or maybe 25. The imprecision over his age led to debate over whether Chichi, or the Cheech, as he was sometimes known, had been the world’s oldest living dog.

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