Many people think that Hawaii has no change of seasons. That’s just not true. We have two seasons. Fishing tournament season and bird hunting season.
Where I grew up in South Texas, we had the “usual” four seasons. Fishing season, football season, hunting season and baseball season.
Many folks who don’t hunt have misconceptions about what hunting is all about. No, it is not all about shooting guns. For the unfamiliar, this may sound a little odd, but hunting is mostly about dogs, at least bird hunting anyway.
A truly good dog working in the field can be a joyous addition to your day, and not just because you will find more birds. The first time you watch a dog with nose high and into the wind, catch a faint whiff of a scent and then use canine intelligence to work through the process of locating a small bird after a hundred yard track, you could rightly be astonished.
Even if your dog does this daily, over and over, you will never tire of it. If you have a dog that can do this, prepare to be taught a lesson when you want to go one direction, but dog knows there is a bird in the other direction. If you try and make it go your way, some will actually look at you like, “Hey dummy. This is my job, right? This way!” Once you start believing them, you will see that they are rarely wrong.
Many good bird dogs are not suitable as pets for people who don’t hunt. They’ll drive you crazy. Young ones need to run every day, and really intelligent ones want to be constantly challenged. You can’t inject intense drive into a dog that does not have it at birth, so if you get a dog that does, you deal with their quirks, knowing you are lucky.
Everyone has their breed preference, for more reasons than there are breeds. Regardless of your personal preference, it is wise not to be any more judgmental of another man’s breed preference than one would be of their choice of wives. Conversely, there always seems to be somebody who thinks they have the best dog in the world, and wants everyone within earshot to know.
When I was a kid, we had labradors because we mostly duck hunted in the marsh. When we went deer hunting, we brought the labs for tracking. When we creeped ducks on stock tanks they happily jumped in after them. South Texas brush country is thick, so if we found quail they were usually on the road. Labs loved to go pick them up. These are reasons why labs were our family breed preference.
Later on, I was introduced to an unusual breed of hunting dog called a “drathaar”— German wirehaired pointer in English. A friend named Buck had five of these odd looking, bearded pups in his kennel. When we went out to see them, they hopped all around and wailed like banshees. He gave one whistle and a simple hand signal and the pandemonium came to an instant halt. He opened the kennel gate and not a single dog so much as flinched. One by one, he called their names. That dog and that dog only, exited the kennel.
He let them run around his big yard for a while and eventually each one found something interesting to focus on, and things calmed down. Buck motioned us toward the house. When we got to the door, he called for one of the dogs, Bosco, and let him in with us.
We sat in the living room to watch a game and Buck softly whistled for Bosco. He was there in a flash and his intense golden eyes searched Buck’s face for the reason he had been summoned.
“Bosco, get me a beer.”
The dog bolted to the kitchen, pulled a towel on the fridge door until it opened, reached in the door, grabbed a beer and swiftly delivered it to his master.
“Bosco, door.” The dog raced back and nudged the door shut. Of course – I had to have one. Dogs are what hunting is all about!
I have now raised, bred and hunted drathaars here in Hawaii for about 24 years. Not one has ever brought me a beer. Training them to mix a cocktail has been a failure.
I have a drathaar pup now that I bought on the mainland, so I had to figure out navigating months of rabies quarantine. I decided that spending those months driving and sightseeing the American West with a puppy was a grand idea. And it was.
I looked into bringing her in and boarding her at a quarantine facility on island, but a field dog puppy needs fields. Boarding may be a good choice for some dogs, but I didn’t think it was fair for a bird dog puppy.
What I did not foresee, however, was that if you raise a puppy in a pickup truck, and you change locations every day or so, you are training a dog with intense desire to work, that his main job is to get in the truck every time it fires up. Driving around the West is not as much fun when your buddy is in a kennel in the back of the truck, so the dog also became trained to jump in the cab when the truck fired up.
I used to shake my head at guys with dogs in their cabs, and I get that look from others now. However, this dog does all that stuff a good dog is supposed to do in the field, so I’ve just dealt with the extra work of un-training what she learned over the course of eight important puppy learning months.
Working dogs take their jobs seriously. Un-training one is a long, slow process. Hunting season only complicates it because in between hunts she sits in the truck, waiting. She has learned to accept staying home when told, but that’s not to say happily. Getting her to like the kennel is another thing all together.
So, yeah. Hunting is not much about shooting guns. Hunting is mostly about dogs, bird hunting is anyway..
