Training the HPR
Training of the HPR is a longish business - they have to learn a great deal, and the relationship has to be built on mutual trust - sometimes the dogs will hunt a quarter of a mile away from you.
Hunt Point Retrieve Training
Called The Versatile Gundog in the book of that name by Guy Wallace, the hunt point retrieve breeds are fantastic companions for the rough shooter, deer stalker or indeed the austringer or falconer. They can be trained in several disciplines and my experience of the German Shorthaired Pointer is they are great fun to work. I have used them to point rabbits, work with ferrets by telling me which holes have rabbits in, worked them on lowland pheasants, snipe, woodcock and mountain hare, grouse and partridge.
My dog was a tremendous jumper in his youth, clearing a five bar gate by a good foot. Our bitch has always preferred going under, being slightly less elegant. I remember after teaching her the basics of jumping, refusing to open a gate for her as we came out of the end of a fenced piece of woodland. I gave her the jump command and she looked at me askance. When I repeated the command she turned tail and ran back the way we had just come, 300 yards to the point at which she had pushed under the fence to get in, and came back outside the wood. Not an ideal result, but an indication of their intelligence.
Before I stop chatting and start reviewing the books, let me just qualify that statement about intelligence. I was leaning on one of Jim's gates, admiring one of his bulls, when Shale jumped the gate on the left of me, Breeze hit the top bar of the gate on the right of me and rolled between the bulls legs. Thankfully he was slower to react than she was, and she was off covering the field for rabbits with Shale before he could move.
The Versatile Gundog by Guy Wallace
Training HPRs for Gun, Rifle and Hawk
This book was one of the first I had on HPRs, and proved a useful guide to the move from the spaniel mindset to the HPR mindset.
Covering such useful aspects as introducing the pup to sheep - we live on a sheep farm, and the fact that our dogs were introduced to sheep as young animals in the way Guy suggests means that the farmer has always been happy with our dogs. This includes the time when the dog leapt the fence and found himself amongst 50 ewes which did not have time to react. He ran on working the ground for rabbits, totally ignoring the ewes which gathered their wits and went in the opposite direction. When I later confessed to Jim he didn't want to know, considering our dogs to have no more effect on his animals than his sheep dogs. I think that if a farmer can take that attitude it is a reflection that you are training your dogs to a proper level.
A book I would thoroughly recommend to anyone moving to an HPR breed from spaniels or labradors.
Gund-Dog Training - Pointing Dogs by Kenneth C Roebuck
For the more experienced trainer, this is a great book written with an American slant. This includes the use of call birds (quail) to allow dogs to hunt game on demand, with birds that are released in the morning, used for pointing practice, and that return home in the evening.
It also suggests using a local shooting club to allow you to sort out any minor problems with your more experienced animal, as the birds are guaranteed. This is a little like clay pigeon shooting but with live birds, so the dog can gain experience more consistently.
A very interesting read, but some parts not strictly relevent to the UK.