Question: I've heard many different descriptions of range for a pointing dog. My friends and I are constantly debating what constitutes long range and short range, or ever medium range. How do you define range?
Carl E., Traverse City.
Answer: I've always left the decision of what range is best to the dog's owner. Some people like having their dog work very close while others don't mind if their dog works several hundred yards from the handler. When I say work, I mean the dog should be quartering the ground in front of you. A dog that runs a straight line at all times is much less efficient at finding game and leaves much of the field untouched, regardless of the range it's working. Range, for the sake of this question, is the distance the dog is allowed to hunt from the handler. Range should be dictated by density of surrounding cover. For me, denser cover constitutes shorter range.
Let's start with describing what long range is first. Once a long range description is established, the others will be easier to understand and judge. All age, horseback field trial dogs are long range hunters. Six hundred, eight hundred, or even a thousand yards out in flat, open country isn't a problem when a hunter is on horseback or following in a vehicle. If you were hunting Canada's prairie provinces or the prairies of our western states, a long range dog that is trained to hold point is a great asset.
The key here is ‘trained to hold point.' I encounter plenty of hunters whose dogs will hold point for only a minute or two. Many of these dogs have never been trained to hold point until release, and they're releasing on their own instead. Most of them are working from instinct rather than training. Therefore, the owner needs the dog to work within shotgun range all the time, much like a flushing dog. You'll find that the more experienced dog handlers will allow their dogs to range at greater distances rather than a novice handler. When I'm hunting on foot, I prefer a dog that's hunting within three hundred yards in open country and a hundred yards in the woods or bushy terrain.
As a rule, the longer the range of the dog, the more apt the owner will be, hunting with a beeper collar rather than a bell. Bells have a limited range of sound and once the dog is on point, have very little value in finding the animal, where as a beeper will usually have volume control. The better models do, and a beeper will continue signaling when a dog is standing on point. The advantage of a long range hunting dog in open country is that you don't have to personally cover all that land. The dog is there to do the work for you. I'll sit back on a high spot and watch the dogs cover the fields around me. When one strikes point, I move in for the shot.
I don't consider Michigan ‘open country.' Most of our hunting is done is wooded or bushy country, or smaller farm fields. Smaller means two hundred acres or less, and it's usually divided by roads. For me, a dog out eight hundred yards in Michigan is a lost dog, simply because in the grouse woods that I hunt, eight hundred yards is out of sight and out of the sound of the beeper. Conversely, a dog working at twenty yards out is forcing me to walk every square yard of area I'm in, thus putting miles on my tired old legs, which could be saved by a wider-ranging dog. I hunt to relax and enjoy the outdoors, not to get a lot of strenuous exercise.
A medium range dog in Michigan for me is seventy-five to one-hundred-and-fifty yards out. Out west, it'd be two hundred to three-hundred-and-fifty yards. A close working dog in Michigan for me is under forty yards. A dog constantly working under forty yards in Michigan, except in very dense cover, would be, in my opinion, a boot-polisher and used mainly for retrieving.
Charlie Linblade
Mighigan Wing Shooters Hunt Club
Michigan Pheasant Hunting
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