My love for setters first started when I was about eight years old. With my dad and his hunting buddies we were getting ready to head into a soil bank field (the original CRP) in North Dakota and this truck with out of state plates pulled up to hunt the posted land next door to us. The pair of hunters got out and when they opened the back of the truck there were two black and white setters that launched on command and never missed a beat as they cleared a four strand barbed wire fence, rocketed into the field and locked up, one just behind the other. The two hunters took their time and went out into the field, flushed three pheasants, one a rooster that dropped to one hunter’s Superposed shotgun. We didn’t have any money back then and our dogs were labs or lab mix flushing dogs of questionable linage but they did find birds although sometimes they were in the next county when they did. I knew without asking that those setters didn’t come from the neighbors litter who just wanted to get rid of them. But that image stuck with me as I grew up and read about these gorgeous bird hunters and I vowed to someday have my own. A move to Alaska, a family, and a life of law enforcement work derailed my bird hunting for many years. Then a life threatening illness made me decide it was time to either do it or die never knowing. When I started looking for a setter I wasn’t concerned about field trial stuff, I wanted a dog from a solid big running hunting lineage knowing the wide open mountains we would hunt together. When I found a breeder in western North Dakota with setters that they hunted from horseback and whose photographs told the story, I contacted them and Winchester came into and forever changed our lives. When I spoke with the breeder I never asked about pedigree ( I don’t claim to be very bright), all I cared was the dogs were big running hunters and he never mentioned Winchester’s lineage. It wasn’t until having him for a while and realizing how special he was that I looked at his pedigree and saw the names of so many famous setters I had read about over the years, then it all became clear. It isn’t any wonder that he has taught me more about bird hunting than any book I’ve ever read, any time before him I spent in the field, or any other dog I had been around. How can you not fall in love with a breed that mirrors your own prey drive and no matter how the day goes is just so beautiful to watch in the field that the killing of birds becomes secondary.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 02:21:03 +0000