Good things happen when the bell stops...well, sometimes, anyway.

The key to this approach is to have a well-bred dog with good instincts. That’s why my conversation with Kena about cookies was the best “training” I ever did with Aspen.

What to Expect
After you’ve made the switch from a flushing dog to one that stops when it finds a bird, you don’t know what to expect. You’re excited but a little uneasy. Hundreds of questions will run through your head the night before your first hunt, causing you to sleep like a colicky baby, or a kid on Christmas Eve. Maybe knowing what it can be like will make it easier for you than it was for me.

Years of hunting with flushing dogs had conditioned me to keeping the dog within gun range. If the dog got too far out, I called it back. If it followed a running bird, I tried my best to keep up. Knowing that a pointing dog’s job is to cover as much ground as possible in search of birds, I tried to keep my mouth shut as Aspen roared through the brush like something bad was after her.

I knew that trying to keep a pointing dog close defeated the purpose of having one, but that didn’t make it any easier. Whenever I couldn’t see Aspen I became anxious. But then her bell would stop. I’d hurry to her point, trying to concentrate despite the adrenaline-fueled roar in my ears, feeling the same way Mark did with Ginger. Having it work the way it was supposed to helped me slowly become comfortable with not always knowing where Aspen was.

A revelation occurred the first time we hunted in snow when, everywhere I walked, there were dog tracks already there. I realized if there were birds around, she would find them. That’s when I finally evolved from a flushing-dog man hunting with a pointing dog to a real pointing-dog man. A pointing-dog man relaxes, trusts the dog and lets it produce the birds. You have to be comfortable with occasionally not knowing where your dog is.

Another difference is the variation in shots offered by the two types of dogs. Since a bird flushed by a dog is trying to escape the dog, not the shooter, the bird can fly at any angle and can appear at any moment. Sometimes they’ll fly directly at you. I once accidentally evaporated a woodcock flushed by my father’s springer when it came at me like a skeet target from low-house eight.

With a pointing dog, I don’t expect that angle of shot very often anymore. The thing I have to get used to now is not knowing exactly where the bird is when Aspen is on point. In good scenting conditions, a dog can point a bird from 40 yards away, or more. You may have to look around a bit before the bird flushes, or even release the dog to relocate a bird that has run out from under the point.

I once missed an opportunity for an easy shot because I didn’t spend enough time attempting to flush. I assumed the bird had run off, released Aspen from point, and watched with my gun down and my mouth open as a grouse flushed from behind the small cedar tree next to us. Aspen knew better—she hadn’t moved.

Summary
In the end, the biggest adjustment will be accepting that your pointing dog will often be far away. There are many other smaller differences, of course, but those are just nuances. A pointing dog will hunt farther from you than a flushing dog will, and that’s as it should be.

If you’re not comfortable with your dog hunting beyond gun range, you should do yourself a favor and stick with a flushing dog. You’ll both be happier. Neither type of dog is really “better” than the other, but if you’d like to try a dog whose bell stops when it finds a bird, don’t miss out by assuming the requirements will be too difficult to master.