Types of Grasslands in North America

Dog training methodologies are vast. The long lead’s outward appearance may seem to be a relic of training days gone by. And truth be told, for some, they wouldn’t be wrong. With the invention of the e-collar and the now mainstream training approaches of utilizing classical and operant conditioning, many trainers forego the use of the long lead altogether. 

I’d argue that the long lead is not only relevant today but is also an essential tool in developing new trainers before they touch an e-collar. It reduces the chances of overcorrecting, promotes a connection with your dog the e-collar can’t provide, and develops the timing and focus every trainer needs to maximize their dog’s learning. 

Though a simple tool, there are a few things to consider when choosing the right long lead for you and your dog.

When your dog is in a calm state, they are ready to learn and will do so even if you’re not intending to teach them anything. I was at a sportsman club in Maine chatting it up with folks when my German shorthaired pointer started tugging at the lead. Without much thought I reached in my pocket, called her in and treated her throughout the day. What I had inadvertently done is intermittently reinforced an undesirable behavior of lunging on the lead. The dog learned that if she goes to the end of the lead the doggie Pez dispenser unloads its payload of treats. I’m to this day trying to extinguish that behavior.

Suppose one found themselves reading a newspaper in 1912. The headlines may have read, “New Mexico, Arizona Admitted as 48th and 49th States,” “Titanic Sank on its Maiden Voyage,” and “First Stop Light Invented in Detroit.” Between articles, you might have spotted a Winchester Repeating Firearms announcement for its new shotgun, the Winchester Model 1912. Its sales team coined it “the perfect repeater.” 

The pump-action shotgun is a staple in the world of American wingshooting. The Winchester Model 12 is among the shooting world’s cast of popular models, and it was bested only by the Remington Model 870 in production numbers. Four years earlier, the unique Remington Model 10 was the first-ever bottom ejector introduced to the market, with over 275,000 produced until 1929. 

The Winchester Model 1912, or simply the Model 12, was the American manufacturer’s first hammerless shotgun. Nearly two million of them were produced between 1912 and 1962. It saw action in four wars: World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. 

The Labrador Duck was a beautiful black and white type of sea duck considered the first species of North American birds to go extinct during modern times. The last Labrador Duck to be hunted was shot in 1878 in Elmira, New York. It is presumed that the species went extinct shortly after. 

The loss of the Labrador duck is not your typical ecological warning about the dangers of over-harvesting, market hunting, or a general lack of conservation, but a reminder of the fragility and interconnectedness of our ecosystems to the flora and fauna that inhabit them. 

One of the many challenges for biologists and historians when researching past hunting, harvesting, and taxidermy records of the Labrador duck is that it’s a species with many names. It’s an eider-type sea duck, also known as a pied duck, which includes the Golden Eye and Surf Scooter, leading to confusion about which historical entries are appropriate for which duck. Colloquially, it was also known as a skunk duck and the sand shoal duck due to its respective skunk-like black and white appearance and proclivity for sifting through sand bars near shallow estuaries.

The English Setter was America’s first bird dog. And rightly so; they’re known for being incredible hunting partners regardless of the terrain or quarry. As a result, they have a long history in North America, and evidence of that can be found in classic upland bird hunting texts like The Upland Shooting Life by George Bird Evans. However, this dog breed was originally developed across the Atlantic Ocean in England. 

Rather ironically, the more time passes, the less English the English Setter has become. “Wildly popular in some regions, more or less unknown in others, they face extinction in their native land,” says Craig Koshyk in his book Pointing Dogs Volume Two: The British and Irish Breeds. Over 15,000 pups are born in Italy each year, and only 250 are born in England. Italy, France, and Norway have taken the English Setter as a breed and ran with it, and their “influence on the development of the breed cannot be overstated,” said Koshyk.

Nowadays, when we think of duck hunting, we imagine scenes of wing-shooting mallards in a marsh or stubble field. However, before the invention of firearms, ducks were not shot on the wing. They were caught with snares, shot with a bow and arrow or driven into nets. Eventually, techniques were even developed to lure ducks into cages.

So for centuries before the invention of the modern shotgun, the main goal of waterfowlers was to get as close as possible to sitting ducks. And even when the first shotguns did appear, they were too heavy and inaccurate to use for wingshooting, so hunters still had to somehow get close to sitting ducks so they could shoot them on the water. They had two choices: crawl, wade or paddle closer to where the ducks were or, somehow, lure the ducks closer to shore. One such luring method was ‘tolling,’ a technique that hunters learned long ago by watching wild foxes draw ducks closer to shore.

I grew up during what appears today to be the stone age of upland hunting. It’s hard to believe we could simply throw on a bell and go out hunting. Admittedly, there were plenty of frustrating days when the dogs were having a really good time without us. It was just part of the gig back then. We talked to our dogs a lot, constantly commanding to keep them close and if possible, correcting what we could see and more often what we could hear. We were trained to follow the bell and never let it out of hearing range. When a dog went on point we would break into search parties to locate it. If we couldn’t find it, a shot would be fired into the air in hopes we would hear a ding of the bell. 

With the development of today’s hunting technology, we now have the luxury of knowing more about our hunting dogs than ever before. We can hunt comfortably, saying very little to our dogs while enjoying all the sights and sounds our covers have to offer. We know where our dogs are, where they’ve been, how fast they are moving, when they are pointing, or when they are not. We are even able to extend our physical influence out for miles. Though electronic collars (e-collars) are amazing, it’s important to recognize that they are your best friend and your worst enemy at the same time.

When it comes to evaluating hunting dogs—whether for breeding purposes or bragging rights—the methods and philosophies are as varied as hunters themselves. What constitutes a “good” hunting dog, and whose opinion counts? One hunter’s ideal dog could be a terrible match for someone else’s style, and vice versa. 

Non-competitive hunt tests came about as an attempt to standardize the evaluation of hunting dogs at various levels. The tests aren’t perfect, but they at least provide a consistent measuring stick for assessing the natural and trained skills of a hunting dog. For the versatile pointing breeds, perhaps the most well-known system is the North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association (NAVHDA) testing system.

NAVHDA offers four levels of non-competitive hunt tests: the Natural Ability test, the Utility Preparatory Test, the Utility Test, and the national-level Invitational Test. Each of these tests is designed to mimic real-life hunting scenarios and assess the dog’s ability to focus and complete a given task. While the Natural Ability test is focused on the innate skills of pointing, tracking, and swimming, the higher-level tests introduce more trained subjects such as retrieving and steadiness.

The sinkbox was effective for waterfowl hunting because it was flush with the water’s surface and nearly invisible ducks and geese, particularly to the low approach of diving ducks. Its popularity began early, three decades before the Civil War, and it remained a waterfowling tool for over a hundred years. Originating on the North Atlantic Seaboard, its use eventually encompassed all the East Coast states, the Great Lakes, Salt Lake in Utah, and south to Texas and west to California. Market hunters were the first gunners to embrace sinkboxes, and it later spread to the more intrepid of America’s sport hunters. 

As a new owner of a versatile hunting dog, you’ve probably been asked about running in a natural ability or puppy hunt test. Some breeders may request or require that puppy buyers run in a test, while other owners may stumble into the puppy test through local club chapters such as NAVHDA or AKC. For owners of the German-registered breeds—such as the Deutsch Drahthaar, Deutsch Kurzhaar, Deutsch Langhaar, Kleine Munsterlander, and others—the puppy test takes the form of the Verbands-Jugend-Prüfung, or the VJP.