I'm always a bit apprehensive when asked to take a look at an obscure breed. A few are good, but many are fair to middling at best. My recommendation -- not that anyone actually listens to it -- is that those looking for their first pointer would do well to stick with breeds already established in this country: English pointers and setters, Brittanys, German wirehairs (and probably griffons), German shorthairs, you pick the flavor. So when a friend of a friend invited me to hunt over his Irish setters, I had mixed feelings.

Everyone knows that story -- Irish setters, a hard hunting and respected breed a century or more ago, had been show-bred into tall, gangling, feathery shadows of their former selves, vapid beauty queens with no nose, drive, or intelligence.

But over the years, a handful of dedicated individuals have made it their passion to return the breed to its roots. One of those individuals is Rupert Colmore. Colmore owns a ranch he manages exclusively for wild Huns and sharptailed grouse, and in addition to his place, he's got smile-and-a-wave access to thousands of acres of land on surrounding ranches.

There's not much I like better than chasing Huns and sharptails, so when he graciously invited me to hunt over his dogs, I gave it some hard thought -- for about three seconds -- and then threw my gear into my truck and hit the accelerator before someone could talk sense to the guy.

Rupert Colmore readies one of his red setters for the hunt.

Colmore, our mutual friends John Palmer and Ryan Sones and I rendezvoused at Colmore's restored home, drank some coffee, talked bird dogs, drank some more coffee, and then repaired to his front yard, which sloped down to a small pond. A second later, Colmore returned with Nelly, a small, racy dog that looked like an English setter with Ann-Margret hair. Colmore had a retrieving dummy dangling from one hand.

"Watch this," he said. He tossed one of the dummies into the center of the pond, and in a flash the little setter was after it, making a water entry that would have done a Lab proud.

He threw several more, and it was always the same: a big entry, a snappy retrieve and a quick return to Colmore's side for more.

"She's been this way since she was little," he said. I couldn't resist asking, of course, if the rest of his red setters loved the water. "No," he said, "just this one." An honest man. Colmore has a kennel full of red setters on his ranch and another couple on the field trial circuit in Alabama, where they compete against English pointers in horseback field trials.