FIRST LESSON IN AUTUMN CONTINUED. CAUTION.
140. If it is your fixed determination to confirm your dog in the
truly-killing range described in last Chapter, do not associate him for
months in the field with another dog, however highly broken. It would be
far better to devote but two hours per diem to your pupil exclusively,
than to hunt him the whole day with a companion.
141. Many breakers do exactly the reverse of this. They take out an old
steady ranger, with the intention that he shall lead the young dog, and
that the latter, from imitation and habit, shall learn how to quarter his
ground. But what he gains by imitation will so little improve his
intellects, that, when thrown upon his own resources, he will prove a
miserable finder. On a hot, dry day he will not be able to make out a
feather, nor on any day to "foot" a delicate scent. I grant that the plan
expedites matters, and attains the end which _most_ professional trainers
seek; but it will not give a dog self confidence and independence, it will
not impart to him an inquiring nose, and make him rely on its
sensitiveness to discover game, rather than to his quickness of eye to
detect when his friend touches upon a haunt; nor will it instruct him to
look from time to time towards the gun for directions. It may teach him a
range, but not to hunt where he is ordered; nor will it habituate him to
vary the breadth of the parallels on which he works, according as his
master may judge it to be a good or bad scenting day.
142. To establish the rare, noble beat I am recommending,--one not
hereafter to be deranged by the temptation, of a furrow in turnips or
potatoes,--you must have the philosophy not to hunt your dog in them until
he is accustomed in his range to be guided entirely by the wind and your
signals, and is in no way influenced by the nature of the ground. Even
then it would be better not to beat narrow strips across which it would be
impossible for him to make his regular casts. Avoid, too, for some time,
if you can, all small fields--which will only contract his range,--and all
fields with trenches or furrows, for he will but too naturally follow
them instead of paying attention to his true beat. Have you never, in low
lands, seen a young dog running down a potato or turnip trench, out of
which his master, after much labor, had no sooner extracted him than he
dropped into the adjacent one? It is the absence of artificial tracks
which makes the range of nearly all dogs _well_ broken on the moors, so
much truer than that of dogs hunted on cultivated lands.
143. Moreover, in turnips, potatoes, clover, and the like thick shelter,
birds will generally permit a dog to approach so closely, that if he is
much accustomed to hunt such places, he will be sure to acquire the evil
habit of pressing too near his game when finding on the stubbles--instead
of being startled as it were into an instantaneous stop the moment he
first winds game,--and thus raise many a bird out of gun-shot that a
cautious dog--one who slackens his pace the instant he judges that he is
beating a likely spot--would not have alarmed.
144. "A _cautious_ dog!" Can there well be a more flattering epithet?[24]
Such a dog can hardly travel too fast[25] in a tolerably open country,
where there is not a superabundance of game, _if_ he really hunt with an
inquiring nose;--but to his master what an all-important "if" is this! It
marks the difference between the sagacious, wary, patient, yet diligent
animal, whose every sense and every faculty is absorbed in his endeavor to
make out birds, not for himself but the gun, and the wild harum-scarum who
blunders up three-fourths of the birds he finds. No! not _finds_, but
frightens,--for he is not aware of their presence until they are on the
wing, and seldom points unless he gets some heedless bird right under his
nose, when an ignoramus, in admiration of the beauty of the dog's sudden
attitude, will often forget the mischief which he has done.
145. Though you cannot improve a dog's nose, you can do what is nearly
tantamount to it--you can increase his caution. By watching for the
slightest token of his feathering, and then calling out "Toho," or making
the signal, you will gradually teach him to look out for the faintest
indication of a scent, and _point the instant he winds it_, instead of
heedlessly hunting on until he meets a more exciting effluvia. See 174 to
176, and 228.
146. If from a want of animation in his manner you are not able to judge
of the moment when he first winds game, and you thus are not able to call
out "Toho" until he gets close to birds, quietly pull him back from his
point "dead to leeward" for some paces, and there make him resume his
point. Perseverance in this plan will ultimately effect your wishes,
unless his nose is radically wrong. A dog's pointing too near his game
more frequently arises from want of caution--in other words, from want of
good instruction--than from a defective nose.
147. Slow dogs readily acquire this caution; but fast dogs cannot be
taught it without great labor. You have to show them the necessity of
diminishing their pace, that their noses may have fair play. If you have
such a pupil to instruct, when you get near birds you have marked down,
signal to him to come to "heel" _Whisper_ to him "Care," and let him see
by your light, slow tread, your anxiety not to alarm the birds. If he has
never shown any symptoms of blinking, you may, a few times, thus spring
the birds yourself while you keep him close to you. On the next occasion
of marking down birds, or coming to a very likely spot, bring him into
"heel," and after an impressive injunction to take "care," give him two or
three very limited casts to the right or left, and let _him_ find the
birds while you instruct him as described in 228. As there will be no fear
of such a dog making false points, take him often to the fields where he
has most frequently met birds. The expectation of again coming on them,
and the recollection of the lectures he there received, will be likely to
make him cautious on entering it. I remember a particular spot in a
certain field that early in the season constantly held birds. A young dog
I then possessed never approached it afterwards without drawing upon it
most carefully, though he had not found there for months. At first I had
some difficulty in preventing the "draw" from becoming a "point."
148. I have elsewhere observed that fast dogs, which give most trouble in
breaking, usually turn out best: now if you think for a moment you will
see the reason plainly. A young dog does not ultimately become first-rate
because he is wild and headstrong, and regardless of orders, but because
his speed and disobedience arise from his great energies,--from his
fondness for the sport, from his longing to inhale the exhilarating scent
and pursue the flying game. It is the possession of these qualities that
makes him, in his anxious state of excitement, blind to your signals and
deaf to your calls. These obviously are qualities that, _under good
management_,[26] lead to great excellence and superiority,--that make one
dog do the work of two. But they are not qualities sought for by an idle
or incompetent breaker.
149. These valuable qualities in the fast dog, must, however, be
accompanied with a searching nose. It is not enough that a dog be always
apparently hunting, that is to say, always on the gallop--his nose should
always be hunting. When this is the case, and you may be pretty certain it
is if, as he crosses the breeze, his nose has intuitively a bearing to
windward, you need not fear that he will travel too fast, or not repay you
ultimately for the great extra trouble caused by his high spirits and
ardor for the sport.
150. You have been recommended invariably to enter every field by the
leeward side. This you can generally accomplish with ease, if you commence
your day's beat to leeward. Should circumstances oblige you to enter a
field on the windward side, make it a rule, as long as your dog continues
a youngster, to call him to "heel," and walk down the field with him until
you get to the opposite side--the leeward--then hunt him regularly up to
windward.
151. I have read wondrous accounts of dogs, who, without giving themselves
the trouble of quartering their ground, would walk straight up to the
birds if there were any in the field. It has never been my luck, I do not
say to have possessed such marvellous animals, but even to have been
favored with a sight of them. I therefore am inclined to think, let your
means be what they may, that you would find it better not to advertise for
creatures undoubtedly most rare, but to act upon the common belief that,
as the scent of birds, more or less, impregnates the air, no dog, let his
nose be ever so fine, can, except accidentally, wind game unless he seeks
for the taint in the air--and that the dog who regularly crosses the wind
must have a better chance of finding it than he who only works up
wind--and that down wind he can have little other chance than by
"roading."
152. It is heedlessness--the exact opposite of this extreme caution--that
makes young dogs so often disregard and overrun a slight scent; and since
they are more inclined to commit this error from the rivalry of
companionship, an additional argument is presented in favor of breaking
them separately, and giving them their own time, leisurely and
methodically, to work out a scent, _provided the nose be carried high_. I
am satisfied most of us hurry young dogs too much.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Provided always he be not perpetually pointing, as occasionally will
happen--and is the more likely to happen if he has been injudiciously
taught as a puppy to set chickens, and has thereby acquired the evil habit
of "standing by eye;" which, however, may have made him a first-rate hand
at pointing crows.
[25] With the understanding that the pace does not make him "shut up"
before the day is over.
[26] The more resolute a dog is, the more pains should be taken, before he
is shown game, to perfect him in the instant "drop"--25--however far off
he may be ranging.