>>>Do you know this site:
http://www.jagareforbundet.se/jagarfilmforum/

There is supposed to be a video of a setter working ptarmigan there
but I haven't found it.  My Swedish is nil!

Jere>>>

 

Did you find the video from Maud's instructions? You have to scroll down a bit on the page to see the different titles. Then click on the picture of a setter on snow. It is only 57 seconds long so it should not take long to load with a modem. The handler is Norwegian and he uses basically tree words to guide the dog. He calms it down with the word "rolig" when it is trying to nail the restless birds. At flush he will shout "deck", a word used by Norwegians when they want to halt the dog. The dog is pretty steady anyway and would not have chased much I believe. Then he also when needed gives the dog permission to flush with an sharp, excited "jaaa!". Yes, got get them, in English. The grouse are difficult to hunt in snow and even if you may get a dinner or two you will never shoot any quantities in the winter. Some folks shoot them at a distance with a .22 rifle and that method can give more meat on the table.

 

There are different video's from crow shooting to wild boar and moose hunting with our dogs. Anyone can upload a hunting video there as long as it is kept around 2 minutes of length.

 

This is the Swedish Hunter's Associations website and it is full of all kinds of more or less useful stuff.

 

Now to motionless pictures. Maud's adventure to the mountains a little more than a week ago did not produce any meat due to extremely bad weather with snow storms and such. However the last day they had sunshine and shooting with the camera was possible. A lot of new snow had fallen and made life difficult for both dogs and handlers. Still it was the new snow that made it possible for Maud to take a lot of nice photos and in fact some of them will knock your head of! You will find them at our website under "Last Updates".

 

I believe it should be "Latest updates" to be correct English?

 

Anyway Maud started to study at the high school again. It is possible now that we have got broadband internet. Everything is done from home, at least with Maud's subject, namely Photo Editing with Adobe Photoshop. One of the reasons why she started it is that she now officially is a student. That means that she was hence able to buy the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Premium with about 75% discount, for less than 1000 dollars. She already had the CS2 but the step up to CS3 would have been huge should she have paid full price.

 

"Adobe"! We have had Adobe PS since they year 2002 or something. I have never thought much about the name "Adobe", it was just a silly company name among others. Then, some weeks ago I found an old book that I bought somewhere many decades ago. It was Elmer Keith's "Hell, I was there!". I started to read the book again. Elmer Keith, one of Americas most known hunters, riflemen and pistolero's, was born more than a 100 years ago. To my great surprise I found that he used the word "adobe"! I thought "How the bloo..he.. can a man born something like 1890 use the super modern word adobe???"

 

When I read English I usually do not look up in a lexicon every new word I find, only if I cant figure out the rough meaning of it by the context. Now I had to see what "adobe" means. It means "sun-dried bricks, construction made of sun-dried bricks". The word "adobe", that I though was a modern invention, most likely from Silicon Walley, is in fact almost as old as man himself! Well, you learn something new every time you are away from home - a friend of mine use to say.

 

Have you ever thought why I sit here behind the computer telling lies about dogs and why Maud has become such a good dog photographer and is studying photo editing? Have you ever pondered about the flow of life and how it is guided into different directions by happenings that when they happen only seems to have minor importance?

 

Well, the main reason why me and Maud do what we do today was a law that came into effect 1990 I believe. It says that a dog trained to find wounded game must be accessible within 2 hours for the deer hunter, should it be needed. Without that law we would most likely never have got a dog and we would never have found out how much joy they can bring to your home!

 

That's life folks!

 

Torsti 

Borta Med Vindens Kennel
"Ask not what your dog can do for you.
Ask what you can do for your dog."
www.rospigan.net

----- Original Message -----

From: Rob Clay

To: working-gundog@web.whc.net

Sent: Monday, March 03, 2008 8:41 PM

Subject: Re: [working-gundog] Birddog video

Interesting video. As you say the grouse look like challenging birds to hunt. IMO the handler talks to the dog way too much, I tend to let the dog work out birds in silence, keeping commands to a minimum. Generally it's only if the dog forgets its manners, say forgetting to sit to flush, that I'll use a command. My rule of thumb is that when the bird is on the ground (and hence unseen by me) , the dog is in charge, when it's in the air the dog sits and I'm in charge.

"Latest Updates" is the correct term.

Summer is drawing to a close here, we are currently enjoying cooler lengthening nights,  the joy of Autumn/Winter afield with the dogs is just around the corner!!

Cheers,
Rob