https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWyEAT2L3cI

Thank you for posting this. I received a copy of The Upland Shooting Life in 1971, when I was in Viet Nam, and about wore it out before I came home. Although I loved George's writing, I never owned an Old Hemlock dog, going instead to Britts and Pointers, including one National Amateur Grouse Champion. Fortunately, I've been able to hunt A Lot, but George Bird Evans has been an inspiration to me and an ideal for me.

Thanks for posting that.

I've owned a few setters out of Ryman's blood. These dogs are what setters are supposed to look like, flat head with knob at back, long flowing feathers on tail and legs. Robust dogs that are great in stature. Once you see one you know where the lineage comes from.

Here is Max I had to have him put down Dec. 23, 2014 at age 8 because of cancer. This is about 2 years before then.

I think about him all the time, he was always with me around the property.

Robust sucks when you have to load a 10 year old dog in the truck, because he/she can't do it on their own anymore.



I'm a LOT more partial to this build as of right now. 40 lbs of firecracker. The heavy feathers look good in a show ring, they look bad at the end of a day of working fencerows with heavy cockleburr growth.



This pooch is tethered to a 70lb bike that 200lbs of me is about to climb on. She will pull it either 5 or 6 miles, depending on my route. She will do that three or four times, pretty much every day that the road isn't slick.

The robust setters aren't up to that. They tire earlier in the trip, and earlier in their life.

I did have a setter that had heavy Ryman lines. She was a specialist, outstanding on late season pheasants that had been hunted hard, and a lazer on retrieve. Here she is putting the brakes on a running rooster, a rascal that had tried, at the time this picture was taken, to give her the slip for most of an hour. She nailed him down at the end of the planted field, and I took him home after I moved him off this point.

I loaded her in the truck after this trip. She was about 10. Still, it was a great feeling hunting fields that labs had worked and having her come up with birds.

She was a bumbling idiot on grouse, however. You win some, you lose some.




Best,
Ted

Well Ted if you can't spend the time to clean them after they spent the whole day working for you, then my opinion is that you don't deserve him/her.

I didn't say I didn't clean them. I pointed out that you were more likely to get a full day out of a sprite, as opposed to a lumber wagon, who belonged in the show ring, surrounded by folk that don't hunt.


Best,
Ted

Ted, best setter I ever saw belonged to a friend who had some expeience as a breeder and trainer. A wonderful little female Llewellin that weighed 35 pounds soaking wet. No quit in her.

Ted I never said you didn't clean yours and so I had to spend more time in doing mine, but that is what you get from a dog that looks kike that.
These dogs are not far rangers but were bred for close work on woodcock and grouse, so their stamina is not the same as one hunting large fields for quail or pheasant.

Anyone that knows setters knows the name Pinecobles and Warren Scheckels and DeCovery Setters.

DeCoverly. I believe it is DeCoverly. I researched them before I came into what I have, now.

Anyway, the older I get, the more trouble I have with the notion that a setter should "look" like something in or from a show ring. It simply doesn't make for a practical bird season, or multiple days of hunting away from the comforts of home.

I'm not blessed enough to own a kennel full of dogs, and need one who has enough of a head of steam to pull off a week of tough stuff, if I get the chance to do it.

This one will. My Springset Gordon could. My big English, couldn't.

Show dog looks can't overcome that.


Best,
Ted

Yes sorry for the spelling should have proof read like and DeCoverly.

Game. set. match.....Ted on a spelling technicality.....

geesh I guess my departed pinecoble setter didn't read that book about not being able to hunt pheasants!molly jo had 8 yrs of pheasants before she also died of cancer,didnt know what a grouse was!i mounted last 2 birds I shot over her 2wks before she died as a memorial to her.RIP molly jo

I don't think the notion was one of a dog not being able to hunt some species of bird. I think it was about having someone tell you how a setter should or should not "look", regardless of what species you were hunting, what cover you were hunting, and how hard you went about doing that hunting.
Sorry about the loss of your dog. I hate it when that happens to me, and wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Best,
Ted

Ted, first of all that was my opinion of what a setter should look like. If you looked at the video, that is what I was referring to. All old pictures show the exact same type of setter, like the ones in the video. Some of the setters now were bred to be smaller and to me lost the look of the "older" setters.

David, I don't want to get into a pissing contest about dogs....we all have our favorites for whatever reasons make us happy and I'm good with that.

However, as the owner of 4 Llewellins over the last 20 years, it has always struck me that they look most like the old pics I have seen of setters in the field. And when I say old, I mean 1860 to 1910 kind of old. I always think of my Llewellins as English setters from the 1880's, before kennel club ideas of what they should look like took hold. I have taken comfort in the belief that Llewellins have been bred primarily for behavior, not appearance. I'd be interested in your, and anyone's else's, thoughts on this.


edit to add: I have a number of original prints by Alexander Pope Jr of some of the first Llewellins to make it to North America in the 1880's, including copies of the dogs' pedigrees on the back of the prints. These are dogs that are within 3 generations of Llewellin's foundational dogs. And they are dead ringers for the llewellins I see today.

Beans,
I'll preface this with this thought.

The show ring has been more destructive to our breeds of sporting dogs than anything else in their history.

"Old" isn't mid 1800s when talking setters, David. The breed was recognizable as far back as 1000AD, prior to the use of firearms, the game was usually netted, along with the dogs, in the early descriptions of the hunt.The setters were prized more than the evolving spanials for their lack of tongue during the hunt and the crouch that came to be called a point. The descriptions from the era describe a dog of no more than 30 lbs, lean, and able to make game for long periods of time, over great distances.

I had some of the show stock, in Irish and English setters, David. My gut feeling is any dog over 50lbs is starting to show some of the bad effects of breeding for the ring, and it will a tougher row to hoe for that dog between 5-10 years of age. That is just based on what I have seen, and owned, and is my opinion, as well. My two examples of dogs in that catagory were well over 50lbs, and had the show ring "look", big pooch with heavy feathering. But, that "look" didn't help them much in the task of finding, holding, or retrieving birds, especially as older dogs.
I don't hunt anywhere on the east coast, and the wide, open expanses of the Dakotas, that are my backyard, might be shocking for someone with a lot of time spent in New England and their dog to see. I came to my notions of what works for me in a setter, right here. When I see the big plowhorse style of a dog in that country, I feel a twinge of sympathy for the dog.


Best,
Ted

I am reading this with great interest, as I am only 19. What I get from this thread is regardless of what breed or line thereof we hunt, the clearest message coming through from everyone is just how much we LOVE OUR DOGS! My family's GSP Dixie Belle is almost 16, blind and deaf with hip dysplasia. We have not hunted her in years. The vet says she is healthy otherwise. My father and mother get up twice a night to take her out so she won't soil and humiliate herself. EVERY NIGHT! I asked my father if he would ever put her down, his answer..."As long as she is not in pain [vet says no] then she will stay with us as long as she has"
Just my opinion.

H

You are 19 and you are hanging around a double gun website? Wow. Impressive. Welcome aboard.
Hope there is a new bird dog in your future, and time and space to put it to use.

Best,
Ted

Wow, is that setter beautiful.

Obvious difference between Osthaus' setters
http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/20832819

and Muss-Arnolt's & Blinks'
http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/18497486

Riab & Danchin
http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/19972443
http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/19972443

My best was Kate, from a backyard breeder in KS, who still 'set' and sometimes 'flagged'





and had a thing for yard art



It should be noted that in addition to Llewellin and Laverack setters, there were Llandidloes from Wales (all white), Leatherstone, Southesk, Lovat, Naworth Castle, Seafield and Ossulton lines. Also lines from Sweden and Russia.

Drew, thanks for those links. Weren't those Russian setters Llewellins?

http://pointingdogblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/breed-of-week-russian-setter_26.html

http://www.nationallsa.com/ipdba.html

canvasback, I don't think that this is a "pissing match", it is no different than the type of double you prefer.
All I was doing was making a reference to how the dogs in George Evans movie looked compared to old pictures of setters, none had the high tail, which again in my opinion, ruined them. You did not see that in old pictures.

Ted, I'm afraid that was not me that made reference to 1880's as being old. I did state old pictures, mainly old photos and old drawings. And I do believe that the first English setter came to America sometime after the Civil War and was imported by a man from Morris Plains, N.J.

trebling, thanks. He did have some Old Hemlock lineage.

Brother Drew, as always thanks for your vast references.

Thanks Drew, totally unfamiliar with that line of setters and not what I was referring to.

Might also mention the Jetrain line of dogs. But, a dog can be too small also, and some of them were.
I haven't seen one in many years.


Best,
Ted

Never owned but one setter dog. Someone gave "Dan" to me but failed to mention he was deaf. I wondered why he was totally un-biddable until I figured what was wrong with him.

Big solid white dog with beautiful feathering and conformation. My oldest child's first words (he is 40 now) were "HUSH DAN", which I must have hollered out the window a million times.

Dan died when my father was keeping him for a weekend and tossed him a 'gaines-burger'. Dan caught it and choked to death...Geo

Thanks Geo for sharing that wonderful story of yours about a dog that choked to death. Our lives are so much richer for it.

Well shoot, it's just what happened...Geo

Not that I don't like setters, but my present dog, a Deutsche Drahthaar, is the best dog with which I have ever hunted. Not a show dog at all. Had to present a current hunting license to the breeder before he would even talk to me about getting a pup. He's now eight and still behaves like a young dog. And, at about 90 pounds, there is a lot of him.

Keep dogs, they're all going to die somehow. Dan died woofing a Gainesburger, some get a case of Detroit Fever, some get cancer and some just get too old to get up anymore and you have to have them put down. In the scheme of things, Dan died doing the only thing he was good for...Geo

I think there was a writer that put out a book or two, more of an opus or maybe an introduction. It had to do with enriching our gunning through the great bird dogs and experiences. I can picture a bronze of that pup in the field trial hall of fame.

I can't. Dan was grown when someone gave him to me. Never shot a bird over him. I have no idea whether he pointed or not; he was never in eyesight long enough to tell. Somehow he always showed back up at the truck when it was time to go home for supper though!...Geo

"Somehow he always showed back up at the truck when it was time to go home for supper though!."

Geo. just because he was deaf didn't mean he was stupid.

Well we've wandered into deaf dogs, so here's a tribute to Abby, in the middle pointing a wily Ks. squirrel



She was "free" when I got her brother Zach (on right and was a great dog). The breeder pointed to her and said "Guess we'll just put her down 'cause she's deaf" and home she came.
Sweet as can be and easily yard/house trained because she just followed her brother around. Spent most of the day pointing/backing Zach (driving him nuts). Never tried to take her out with plenty of other dog power at the time.
This "free" dog cost me about $2000 in vet bills and replacement dog boxes and buckets since she ate anything that wasn't metal. Came home from work one afternoon and she managed to eat the plastic handle on an outside faucet, turning it on full, and flooding part of the basement One Sunday morning we were getting ready for church and I heard this strange noise from underneath the second floor deck where the dogs hung out. She'd discovered that she could strip the lattice work strip by strip, to her great enjoyment and compulsion.
Deaf dogs are usually not right in the brain and sure enough she developed Canine Cognitive Dysfunction at only 8 years old, and totally lost it.

Speaking of setters

Jim the Wonder Dog
http://www.marshallchamber.com/jimthewonderdog.htm



Annie and Dave

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_the_Wonder_Dog

http://www.jimthewonderdog.org/foj_story.html

Thanks for sharing those sites, very interesting.

JDW, Max was one beautiful dog.

Thank you. I thought I would share a few more pictures of him. I do miss him.
Here is Max at 9 weeks old, first time I threw this dummy out he retrieved it and brought it to me.

A little over 3 months old. The quail I had did not like to stay in the fields, they would rather come and hide by the house and under my truck.


5 months and 3 days old. He never bothered with the quail in the pen, but when they came back to it he would point them. The check cord was just to keep in in line.

14 months pointing quail in the back yard.