F E AT U R E A RT I C L E the dog down the canyon. I can direct the dog to work one side or the other while I just stand there and when the area has been covered I call the dog back. We then move down the ridge a few hundred yards and do it all again. A few dogs will work down the canyon and then back up the other side to the top. If the dog gets a point at the top of the other side, it can be a real workout for me. A dog without power will never come close to doing a good job hunting in this situation.
Hoover works the bottom of a canyon with thick cover.
A few years ago in Idaho I was hunting with three other guys and three dogs. With us was one my dogs, a bitch who was in the prime of her hunting life. At the top of the area is a wetland created by series of springs coming from rock outcroppings. There is about 30 acres covered with Russian Olive trees, cattails and tall sagebrush and we always find a few pheasant and some valley quail there. The land opens up into a big, deep steep-walled canyon with lots of thick cover at the bottom. The area is rugged and so we left the pickup and the trailer at the bottom of the drainage and drove the ATVs to the top so we could hunt downhill most of the time. It is about eight miles from the head of the canyon to where it opens up onto the flatland so it takes awhile to hunt, but there is a lot to hunt – pheasant, quail, chukar, huns, blue grouse, ducks and cottontails. It’s an area that is about as good as it gets for a hunter and a GWP. On this hunt, the dogs were wearing tracking collars with the distance/
direction display. I turned them loose at the top and though we could rarely see them in the thick cover, they never got more than thirty yards away. We got some quail and pheasant at the top and then started down the canyon. The four of us were spread out as we worked the canyon and we used our radios to keep in touch. The dogs worked between us and never ranged more than 100 yards away. There were quail and pheasant in the more open areas of the canyon and down farther we got into moderately thick rosebushes that were packed with quail. I was in a steep part of the canyon when my bitch started working a big bald ridge. At the top was a rock pile and I thought for certain she would find chukar in those rocks. I remember wondering how long it was going to take me to get to her, if she did. Thankfully she found nothing and began to work her way back. Though she was in thick growth I watched the tracker and she was always within 50 yards. About half a mile from where we left the pickup, the canyon opens up to a flat where we usually find huns. As we reached that area, my bitch ranged out about 300 yards. That hunting trip to Idaho was typical of what I see when I hunt with a dog that has the power to run in field trials. Good dogs know how to use their power but they also know when to dial it back. A couple of years later, I was in Montana and I was hunting with another of my “power” bitches. The cover was so heavy I couldn’t find her on point five feet from me. For two days as we hunted the same 20 acres of wetland covered with head-high grass, trees and bushes – an area filled with pheasant. I watched the tracker and most times she stayed within 20 yards. She walked with her nose on the ground all day and she had many points on pheasants – shots that I missed because of the thick trees and brush. In that situation a long-range dog would have been useless. On the third day of the hunt we went out to the grasslands and hunted huns and sharptails. I turned the bitch loose and she made nice 400 yard casts. The
At the top of the bald ridge I was certain the bitch would find chukar.
two fellows hunting with me asked if I was going to call her back.“What for?” I responded. “Do you want to walk all the way over there if there is nothing to shoot?” This bitch is a power dog but she knows how and when to use it. Not all Wirehairs will have the power to hunt at a long-range. Some are limited by their genes and will always be close in hunters just as our standard requires. But I feel that if you can have a dog with power it is better thing than to have one with no power. I’ve had little success trying to instill more power into a dog that has little and I’ve also had dogs that had lots of run but did not have the mental discipline to be great hunting dogs. Just like people, each dog is different; some dogs are better hunters than others. If you have a dog with lots of power spend time keeping it close when it is young. If you do that your dog will learn to hunt close-in. Wirehairs like to please and they adapt well to different situations and conditions. I think power dogs are like pickups. If you have a half-ton truck with a small engine no matter how hard you push on that accelerator you won’t be able to pull a big trailer. But if you have that one-ton truck with a big engine you can always use the brakes to slow it down. Of course not everyone will agree with me. These are just my thoughts and opinions based on my experience. The best advice I can give is that if you have a power dog let it go hunt! And I’ll bet if you do, that you will have a great hunting experience! ©2013 GWPCA WIRE NEWS
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