NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/977334
34 NEBRASKAland • MAY 2018 a professional bird dog trainer from Humbolt, South Dakota, allows his six vizslas to live indoors with him and his wife. "Some of them lie on my lap," he confessed. "It can become a little chaotic, but if they get too rambunctious I just kick them into the yard. We have a kid coming so we'll have to start some sort of rotation system." The dogs' emotional attachment is sometimes evident if they lose sight of Martinsen while hunting. One of his best, Milo, used to backtrack in near panic if he lost visual contact, but then he adopted a quirky method of checking back to spot his master in deep cover – standing tall on his hind legs like a kangaroo. On the other end of the attachment spectrum is Douglass. Asked if his dogs ever come indoors, he replied, "Oh no, no, no. They smell like hell. You'd never get a woman in here!" He added, "Some of the field trial dogs don't humanize real well. They just want to hunt." Oversized lapdogs Martinsen's may be, in the field they transform to match the desire of Douglass' less civilized dogs. Any decent hunting dog shows intensity, but there is no comparing Martinsen's or Douglass' animals to your neighbor's dog. One simple difference is stamina. "These are high- level athletes," Douglass said. "In championship rounds they run a solid hour. During the off-season I exercise them on backroads from horseback or ATV." As a pheasant hunting guide, Martinsen often notices the difference between his expert dogs and those more ordinary. "My dogs pay attention while the other guys may have to shout 10 times to get theirs to respond," he said. "And most don't retrieve as well, dropping or playing with the bird, needing prompts to bring it back." Sloppy retrievals are scored poorly by Gene Larsen, a pointing dog judge from Exira, Iowa. Larsen and his strawberry roan horse, Cher, have been judging so long that he doesn't need to guide her. "She just follows the dogs," he said. "I tell people that for these events you need two things: a dog and a sense of humor, because one day the dog is gonna make a fool out of you. I once saw a dog climb a tree to get a quail!" Larsen receives no pay for judging, only travel expenses. "I just like getting outdoors, being with good people and watching great dogs work." That is what most of these folks will tell you. They are adrenaline-seeking outdoorsmen and women with a love of hunting birds and a penchant for creating excellent canine hunting partners. These are bird dog lovers. ■ Above: A hunting dog's nose unlocks a sensory world we cannot imagine. Opposite: The shotgun is just a prop in this portion of the hunting test. As the quail flee and a starter pistol is fired, the dog must remain perfectly still.