Forest and Stream 
t3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy, 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 1913. 
VOL. LXXX.—No. 25. 
127 Franklin St., New York, 
The Toling Dog—Or Little River Duck Dog 
A Remarkable Dog, Little Known Outside Newfoundland 
By H. A. P. S. 
W ITH nose as true as the pointer’s, with 
sight as keen as the greyhound’s, with 
endurance as great as the foxhound’s, 
with courage equalling the bulldog’s, with dis¬ 
position as playful as the spaniel’s, with coat as 
dense as the otter’s, and with love for his master 
more fervent than that of any other living thing, 
and his color is fox-red, from the end of his 
nose to the tip of his busy bushy tail, save a 
white dash on his broad chest, and in some 
specimens, a white blaze in the face; his weight 
about fifty pounds (bitches forty), his height at 
the shoulder twenty inches, wide-skulled, with 
moderately large pendant ears. The above is a 
fair description of the Toling dog, whose equal 
as a duck dog the writer has yet to meet. He 
has all the traits of his progenitor, the Labrador 
retriever, with the added ability to attract or 
tole his game. The photograph of the Labrador 
dog in Forest and Stream of April 26 could 
easily be mistaken for a Toling dog, but for his 
color. So alike in head are they that at first 
glance I thought Mr. Henwood had preceded 
me in writing of my favorite, the “Toler.” 
It no doubt will be news to many of the 
readers of Forest and Stream to know that the 
“playing” of the Toling dog near the water will 
attract the wild duck. In Nova Scotia our best 
game ducks are the blue-wing duck (or black- 
duck) and the blue-bill (or broad-bill), and both 
these birds will tole to the antics of the Toling 
dog. The butterball and merganser ducks will 
also tole, but the whistler vvill jump into the air 
at the sight of him as if a gun was discharged 
in their midst. Sea ducks and fish ducks, such 
as the coot, etc., seem to take no notice of the 
dog, and he has no attraction for them. 
The idea of this toling ducks came from the 
fact that the fox has been known for many years 
to possess the power to attract the wildfowl by 
reason of his color and his movements along 
the shore, and many a fat blackduck has paid 
the penalty of his curiosity and furnished a meal 
for foxy old Reynard on the shores of our in¬ 
land lakes. It was my privilege and delight to 
see a fox at work on one occasion. We were 
hunting moose near the Boundary Rock in 
Nova Scotia, and as our canoe turned a bend in 
the Coufang River, I saw directly ahead of us 
and in plain sight, four blackducks. Wonder¬ 
ing why they did not fly at sight of us, I glanced 
ahead of them, and there on the top of a flat 
rock which projected into the water lay a fox 
with his nose between his paws. Every second 
or so he would raise his brush and give it a 
flip from side to side. The ducks were swim¬ 
ming directly toward him intently watching that 
white-tipped tail, and not more than fifteen 
yards away from his waiting hungry jaws. Just 
then my hunting companion coming down the 
river in the canoe behind us, and catching sight 
of the fox, shot at him. The bullet from his 
Winchester hit the rock beneath him and spoiled 
what otherwise would have without a doubt 
ended in a little tragedy, and would have been 
a sight which very few have ever witnessed. 
I have always felt perfectly certain that that 
fox would have carried away with him one of 
those four birds, a victim of curiosity. But 
what a transformation that bullet worked! Into 
the air went fox, ducks, and pieces of granite 
boulder, and as my hunting companion re¬ 
marked as he lowered the rifle between his 
knees, “I guess that rock was red hot, the way 
that fox took to the air.” 
If you are a dog man, the first time you 
see a Toling dog, your attention will be at once 
arrested. Therefore let us suppose that you 
meet the writer with a pair of Tolers at heel, 
and after looking critically at them, you re¬ 
mark—as hundreds have done before—what kind 
of dogs are those, Chesapeake Bays, or what? 
If time is no object, the answer will probably, 
be, they are Toling dogs, and when the explana¬ 
tion is forthcoming that they are used to tole 
ducks within range of the gun, your questions 
will come thick and fast, such as: Do they go 
in the water? How far will ducks come to the 
dog? Do the dogs know they attract the birds? 
Will they retrieve the birds you shoot? But 
if time is limited, you would likely get the 
answer: Oh, they are duck dogs, or just dog, 
I guess. 
But we will suppose you are a duck shooter 
and are also sceptical, and came from Missouri 
and want to be shown, and it is finally agreed 
that we repair to where we know blackducks 
congregate. It is not yet daylight when we 
reach our “blind” on the edge of the sandy 
shore of the bay. This blind Is one I have toled 
many a fine shot from, and is composed of three 
or four old lobster pots, which have been cast 
ashore in the surf, and a few old roots of trees— 
the whole covered with dead seaweed, and just 
large enough to conveniently hide us and the 
dog. Making ourselves as comfortable as pos¬ 
sible, and pulling our coat collars up and our 
wool caps well down (for the month is Decem¬ 
ber and terribly cold, the lakes are frozen and 
the ducks are now in their winter feeding 
grounds), you turn your head and see the yel¬ 
low flicker of a lamp through the kitchen win¬ 
dow in the farmhouse across the great salt 
marsh behind us, and where we enjoyed the 
warmth from the big wood stove an hour ago, 
as our breakfast of fresh eggs and biscuit, 
washed down with steaming tea, was eaten, and 
you half wish yourself back there again. It is 
“star calm,” not a breath of air, and very frosty. 
Our dog is curled up tight, his nose covered by 
“BUFF,” A FINE SPECIMEN OF TOLER. 
