With excellent bird numbers last year and a mild winter we were hoping we’d have another great season. Distribution was more spotty this year but numbers were similar and we had fantastic hunting. As a bonus the weather was really nice. On the down side hunting pressure was pretty heavy and the birds were very spooky. That’s not all bad – challenging birds make for a great test of the dogs’ ability to handle them. They didn’t disappoint.
Our main focus was on continuing to develop our young dogs. Lily and Talus each produced a litter last year and they are maturing into very reliable bird handlers. Here’s a photo of Talus pointing dead.
Lacy is a young female out of Buck x Dusty that hunts very much like her mother, fairly wide and very fast. By the end of her first season she was pointing consistently and she continued to find and point all the birds she had a chance on. Here she is on a covey of Huns.

And a short video clip.
The boys from our cross to the Iceland dog, Birch and Hunter, are both doing an outstanding job on birds and are easy dogs to hunt. They find birds from extremely long distance and go straight to them and point, pinpointing them from really far away – in some cases well over 100 yards. When we did the cross one thing we didn’t know was how early Mori developed. We still don’t but his offspring learned to handle birds every bit as quick as the rest of our dogs and they did it early, in just 2-3 hunts at six months old. We couldn’t be happier with them.
Here they are struttin’ their stuff.


We kept a female (Gili) out of our Talus x Heather breeding and took her on her first hunts. During the first three hunts she saw a few birds flush and found one covey, which she bumped. Typical puppy. On the fourth hunt after one wild flush she located a covey and again bumped it. A few minutes later she she stopped to investigate something (droppings maybe?). She was standing there sniffing around when she suddenly snapped into a point. We never flushed any birds but she held point and let us walk way out ahead of her. After that she got really cautious when she smelled something interesting and it was obvious she was trying to point. Which she did on the next covey she found and again, let us walk in to flush. Lisa snapped a quick photo of the point.

She found and pointed a second covey not long after this. Again, once that pointing instinct kicks in it’s there to stay and they point the birds they find. We didn’t get any shots off on this hunt for safety reasons but we did manage to shoot a Hun over one of the five points she made (out of six chances) on her next hunt. She made a nice find and retrieve to boot.

Having so many birds this year made us realize how consistently the dogs make points on them. If you exclude birds that flush wild it’s unusual for the dogs to not point a covey of Huns or Chukars. We realized we’ve started to take for granted that the dogs will point them, even young dogs like Gili that only have a few hunts under their belts.
Of course we also got the older dogs out for their turns and enjoyed lots of good dog work from them, as usual. Now we await our first litter, due in late February.
Wow! Looks like the outcross was a success. I love the shot of Birch on point. Beautiful dog, and beautiful confirmation and style. What does he weigh?
67 lbs
Sounds like a fun and rewarding season. Thank you for sharing the photos and stories. I love watching the youngsters figure out what wild birds are all about. We were happy to see a pic of Holly’s sire. Buck looks great!!!
Buck is still going strong:-)
Any new litters coming soon?
First is due late February, out of Lily x Coulter.
We look forward to your posts, and as always, certainly enjoyed the season recap. Thank you for updating us October Setter lovers. Glad to hear the bird numbers were up and that you had productive dog work. The pups look fabulous and I agree with Sue, it was nice to see Holly & Ollie’s sire – Thanks for all you do Cliff and Lisa!
Hated to have to end the season, but it was a good one for us. Buck is a really nice dog to have along, and to hunt with.
Lisa