doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Old Hemlock

Thank you for posting this. I received a copy of The Upland Shooting Life in 1971, when I was in Viet Nam, and about wore it out before I came home. Although I loved George's writing, I never owned an Old Hemlock dog, going instead to Britts and Pointers, including one National Amateur Grouse Champion. Fortunately, I've been able to hunt A Lot, but George Bird Evans has been an inspiration to me and an ideal for me.

Thanks for posting that.

I've owned a few setters out of Ryman's blood. These dogs are what setters are supposed to look like, flat head with knob at back, long flowing feathers on tail and legs. Robust dogs that are great in stature. Once you see one you know where the lineage comes from.

Here is Max I had to have him put down Dec. 23, 2014 at age 8 because of cancer. This is about 2 years before then.

I think about him all the time, he was always with me around the property.

Robust sucks when you have to load a 10 year old dog in the truck, because he/she can't do it on their own anymore.



I'm a LOT more partial to this build as of right now. 40 lbs of firecracker. The heavy feathers look good in a show ring, they look bad at the end of a day of working fencerows with heavy cockleburr growth.



This pooch is tethered to a 70lb bike that 200lbs of me is about to climb on. She will pull it either 5 or 6 miles, depending on my route. She will do that three or four times, pretty much every day that the road isn't slick.

The robust setters aren't up to that. They tire earlier in the trip, and earlier in their life.

I did have a setter that had heavy Ryman lines. She was a specialist, outstanding on late season pheasants that had been hunted hard, and a lazer on retrieve. Here she is putting the brakes on a running rooster, a rascal that had tried, at the time this picture was taken, to give her the slip for most of an hour. She nailed him down at the end of the planted field, and I took him home after I moved him off this point.

I loaded her in the truck after this trip. She was about 10. Still, it was a great feeling hunting fields that labs had worked and having her come up with birds.

She was a bumbling idiot on grouse, however. You win some, you lose some.




Best,
Ted

Well Ted if you can't spend the time to clean them after they spent the whole day working for you, then my opinion is that you don't deserve him/her.

I didn't say I didn't clean them. I pointed out that you were more likely to get a full day out of a sprite, as opposed to a lumber wagon, who belonged in the show ring, surrounded by folk that don't hunt.


Best,
Ted

Ted, best setter I ever saw belonged to a friend who had some expeience as a breeder and trainer. A wonderful little female Llewellin that weighed 35 pounds soaking wet. No quit in her.

Ted I never said you didn't clean yours and so I had to spend more time in doing mine, but that is what you get from a dog that looks kike that.
These dogs are not far rangers but were bred for close work on woodcock and grouse, so their stamina is not the same as one hunting large fields for quail or pheasant.

Anyone that knows setters knows the name Pinecobles and Warren Scheckels and DeCovery Setters.

DeCoverly. I believe it is DeCoverly. I researched them before I came into what I have, now.

Anyway, the older I get, the more trouble I have with the notion that a setter should "look" like something in or from a show ring. It simply doesn't make for a practical bird season, or multiple days of hunting away from the comforts of home.

I'm not blessed enough to own a kennel full of dogs, and need one who has enough of a head of steam to pull off a week of tough stuff, if I get the chance to do it.

This one will. My Springset Gordon could. My big English, couldn't.

Show dog looks can't overcome that.


Best,
Ted

Yes sorry for the spelling should have proof read like and DeCoverly.