Perhaps you could use tree barking dogs, very popular in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia? They are mainly used for big birds like caper, black grouse and also the small hazel grouse that use to hide among the branches of spruce-trees. Most likely the dog do not work on body scent on the first hand but on the small particles that fall down from the birds toes/skin/feathers. With some experience the dog will learn to pinpoint the tree the bird sits in and as soon as that has been done it starts to bark. The bark has several purposes. It calms the bird down, calls for and gives direction to the handler and perhaps also to some degree hide the sounds from the handler as he tries to sneak up to a shooting distance. The birds seem to tolerate the barking dog under the tree very well, while the slightest sight or sound of man will make them nervous.

 

About Foxy and the flying woodcock. Even though Foxy, like Springer, very clearly showed by her body language that there is one now in the air I never saw her actually freeze to point by the sound only. Only body scent from a healthy woodcock on the ground has frozen her on point. Wounded (bleeding) woodcock produces a flash point followed by a search for fetch. Sound point....never!

 

Lets say she finds the particles from a black grouse high up in a tree. Would she point the ground under the tree? Never seen that! If you go out very early in the morning the big forest birds are feeding on the ground. Foxy might push one to fly up in a tree. She would loose direct contact with the birds body scent but perhaps learn that the body scent is now replaced by the scent from the particles that fall down. Perhaps she would also learn that when there are particles on the ground there might be a bird up in a tree.

 

Would a setter point a bird high in a tree just because there is some ground scent under the tree? Never seen that and never heard of that. However some intelligent setters with understanding and cooperative handlers that are extensively hunted in forest might start to indicate a bird in a tree by other means, like looking upward. After all Briz use to bark squirrel's that she first have chased up in a tree here around our house. What if we had started to shoot the squirrels every time she had treed them? Most likely she would have developed some stamina in the barking and sooner or later we could have sold her to Russia as a squirrel dog)) The prerequisite for doing this is of course a dog that A: chases ´squirrels up in trees and B: starts barking at them furiously! Not all dogs like to do that.

 

Anyway, what I was trying to say in the first hand is that English pointing dogs have been bred exclusively to point warm body scent carried in the wind and nothing else, for hundred of years. The Nordic tree barking dogs have been bred for working on treed birds for hundred of years. We have two specialist dogs here.

 

This in turn arises another question: Are there any stimuli that could trigger a birddog into a "true, frozen" point besides of body scent or scent that an inexperienced dog might interpret as body scent? Like sound?

 

We all know that puppies can sight point a dry wing that we move around but usually that behaviour will fade away as the dog gains experience.

 

Torsti