English setters enhance the hunt

For many woodcock hunters, much of the sport's appeal is the dog work.
By SAM COOK
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
SOUTHERN ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Minn. -- Lizzy inches through the jungle of young aspen, every muscle taut. Half-crouched, tail high, the 45-pound English setter lifts first a foreleg, then a hind leg, creeping, creeping.
She is telling Dave Hall, the hunter behind her, that there's a woodcock somewhere just ahead.
There. Right there.
Lizzy freezes in midstride, forepaw lifted, nose trained on the invisible bird's scent.
It is an hour after sunrise on a cool October morning. Hall, clad in patches of blaze orange, is hunting a favorite woodcock cover near home. His 11-year-old son, Austin, tags along in his blaze orange, learning the ways of the hunt without carrying a gun.
It is Hall's job now to walk ahead of Lizzy and flush the woodcock. He is not so sure it's there. Why would it be here, he wonders. Thigh-high grass infiltrates the stand of adolescent aspen.
But Lizzy isn't budging. Right here, she says. Trust me.
Hall has walked and stumbled around her for at least a minute now. He is questioning his 6-year-old setter's judgment. He is facing north when the bird twitters up from the south. He never sees it.
Freed by the flush, Lizzy begins hunting again.
Believe it
"Believe the dog, for crying out loud," Hall, 49, tells himself. "But why would that bird be in 4-foot-high grass?"
Hall, who has hunted woodcock seriously for more than 20 years, knows woodcock are where you find them. Sometimes on higher ground. Sometimes in knee-high boot country. Popple uplands. Alder bottoms. Swamp edges. Even thigh-high grass on occasion.
Hall, who lives in Cloquet, Minn., started hunting woodcock in 1982, when Scott Tout of Esko introduced him to it. For the past eight or nine years, he has served as a huntsman, or guide, for the National Grouse and Woodcock Hunt in Grand Rapids. The October event is sponsored by the Ruffed Grouse Society.
For Hall, and many woodcock hunters, much of the sport's appeal is the dog work.
"The dogs can work a woodcock and hold a woodcock," Hall explains. "It brings out the best of a pointing dog."
Hall bought his first pointing dog in 1984, a Brittany spaniel. After a German shorthair, he moved to English setters and now has Gusty, a 9-year-old male; Lizzy and 5-month-old Nellie.
Lizzy and Gusty are both on the ground now. Nellie is in the truck wishing she was on the ground.
Instinct of pointers
When they hit a scent, flushing breeds work faster and faster until they put the bird up. It is the instinct of pointers, however, to move ever more cautiously when they catch scent, finally locking into a rigid point when they have the bird's location pinned down.
A good pointer won't "bump" birds by getting too close to them and flushing them. A well-trained pointer will hold a point for five or 10 minutes, waiting for the hunter to move in and flush the bird.
Some birds hold well for a pointer. Woodcock are one of them. Pheasants tend to run. A grouse will sometimes walk or run away. But a woodcock will usually be there.
Lizzy locates another one now, and Hall hustles to get in position. Gusty, as he is supposed to do, honors Lizzy's point by stopping and pointing at her. The bird flushes, but Hall passes on the shot.
"I didn't know where Austin was," he says.
Another woodcock flushes wild, ahead of the dogs, and Hall passes on that one, too.
"I don't shoot at a woodcock the dog doesn't point," he says.
Gusty points one at the edge of a clearing, and everything comes together. Hall drops the bird with the second shot from his 28-gauge Parker reproduction double-barrel. Lizzy, the better retriever of the two dogs, finds it and brings the bird to Hall.
For most of an hour, we have been wandering in the dense woods, following the dogs. Austin checks our location on the GPS he carries.
"Are we lost yet?" his dad asks.
"We've been going in circles," Austin says, checking the GPS display.
Which is what woodcock hunting usually involves.