— I. ee “=” hmv ee ee _ 
. 

THE FIRST-RATE QUAIL DOG 
Pointers Versus Setters—A Family Controversy Which Resulted 
in the Regeneration of a Sportsman Who Knew 
BY J. A. RUTHERFORD 
HE first bird-dog I ever 
had experience with 
was an old pointer that 
belonged to my father. 
Spot was colored liver- 
and-white, with “ticked” 
legs and slight tick 
markings over the body; 
his nose was full and 
large, his chest deep, 
and he was a_ well- 
muscled dog, Rating, I should judge, 
about forty pounds when in hunting trim. 
But though I knew him well, and loved him 
perhaps more than was good for him, I had 
never seen him at work until I became the 
possessor of a gun and father desired me to 
join him in the field at the opening of the 
quail season. 
We drove for several miles that morning, 
a glorious autumn day in Virginia, and it 
seemed to me father would never stop, 
before the horse was hitched by the road- 
side and Spot was told to “Go on.” 
We were,not yet in the field, when the dog 
pointed, and we made haste to load our 
guns—at least, father did the loading. The 
guns were muzzle-loaders, and I fear the 
old dog thought father exasperatingly long, 
for I had to be shown how to load my gun. 
We flushed a fine covey of birds, and 
though we both fired twice, only the two 
birds that father shot at fell. And then, 
although he was very anxious to retrieve the 
dead bird, Spot was not allowed to go on 
till the guns were once more loaded, it being 
the practice of the hunters of those days to 
reload always before allowing the dog to 
advance a step. And when the hammers 
were drawn back, with their double clicks, 
for capping the nipples, the old dog was 
poised like a sprinter at the -mark, and 
whining his eagerness to go. He had the 
dead birds spotted, and he brought them 

in turn to father with a fine show of pride, 
and sat down, as he always did, to deliver 
them. 
I thought Spot a very remarkable dog, 
then. But before father decided to quit for 
the day, saying, “‘We’ll save some fun for 
the next time,” I saw the old dog point a 
single quail when he was in the act of 
retrieving and had a dead bird in his mouth, 
and several times I saw him, after a bird had 
been flushed, merely move up a few steps 
and point again. The dog was uniformly 
fast in finding, and cautious when the birds 
were scattered, and, of course, I thought 
him the finest quail dog in Virginia— 
although I had not yet managed to kill a 
single quail over him. 
But on a subsequent trip I caught the 
hang of wing shooting, and I do not know 
which was the prouder of it, myself, my 
father or the old dog. 
I was not satisfied with my muzzle- 
loader, and soon I got hold of an old pin- 
fire breech-loader, which was a very great 
improvement. The shells were equipped 
with a pin an inch long, which stuck up on 
the top side of the breech of the gun, and if 
one slipped from your pocket, or you were 
so careless as to drop it while handling it, 
and the pin should strike against something 
solid, the shell would very likely explode. 
The hammers of the gun, when cocked, lay 
back against the buttstock, and described a 
big half-circle when released—they would 
look like small sledgehammers nowadays. 
Soon I commenced taking Spot a-hunting 
myself, and although I sometimes managed 
to kill as many as two birds in half a day, 
he never seemed to mind it; he appeared to 
enjoy finding the birds and hearing me 
shoot, and I believe he liked going with me 
particularly because he didn’t have to wait 
so long for me to reload. 
A severe winter succeeded the fall that 
