Trust Your Dog’s Nose, Even in Goofy Situations

While Buster Wants To Fish is primarily a flyfishing blog, several of the guys who post are, apparently, bird hunters. One of them shared the pic below of a shorthair on point from the watering tub. It’s a great reminder of just how intense and single-minded a dog becomes when it gets a big snootful of bird scent. We all have our favorite funny point memories, and mine is one that ironically had nothing to do with hunting.

My old pointer, DP, was running around our back yard one day just goofing off when she suddenly locked up near the fence on a rock-solid, tail-at-12, no-mousing-this-time-boss-there-be-birds-here point. I looked around the yard: no quail, no songbirds, no nothing.

I thought there might be a cat in the alley, so I opened the gate and stepped directly into a covey of quail that exploded at my feet. I have no idea where they came from, where they went and what, exactly, they were doing in the alley behind my fence. When I eventually recovered from the mild heart attack that ensued, I resolved to henceforth always take my dog’s nose at its word.