The Pointers of Northwoods Bird Dogs

Northwoods Comet (HOF CH Rock Acre Blackhawk x Northwoods Vixen, 2018)

Even though Jerry and I are primarily known for breeding setters, we also have had a line of pointers for 27 years. It doesn’t have the breadth of our setter breeding program but there is length and incredible strength.

It began inadvertently but we’re so proud of the outcome.

When we started in the 1990s, not only were we neophytes in trialing but in breeding, too. We were fortunate, though, to own an extraordinary liver-and-white pointer female, registered as Dance Smartly. We called her Dancer. Her sire, CH Northern Dancer, was a grouse champion and her dam was ultra talented 6X CH Vanidestine’s Rail Lady. Besides her parents, the top and bottom of her pedigree included three HOF males—Smart, Pork Roll and Guard Rail.

CH Dance Smartly (CH Northern Dancer x CH Vanidestine’s Rail Lady, 1991)

Dancer was a beautiful dog with an evenly masked head and near-perfect conformation. She had intelligence, strength, grace and incredible bird-finding ability. Dancer was stunning on point—confident, composed, nose in the air, eyes on fire. She loved people and couldn’t wag her tail fast enough when anyone got within petting distance.

For a span of three years, Dancer dominated the grouse field trial circuit in our region. She won the 1995 Minnesota Grouse Championship and the 1996 Wisconsin Woodcock Championship. Before the Wisconsin trial was a championship, she was named runner-up in 1994 and won first place in 1995.

Dancer was invited to the Grand National Grouse and Woodcock Invitational three times and was named Minnesota/Wisconsin Cover Shooting Dog of the Year in 1994, 1995 and 1996.

Northwoods Prancer (Dashaway x Fallset Fate, 2008)
© Chris Mathan Sporting Dogs

Jerry and I were novices in breeding knowledge and experience, but we knew Dancer was worthy. Since we had a strong female line as a start, we looked to the best-of-the-best field trial champions for sires. Two are Hall of Fame males—Rock Acre Blackhawk and True Confidence—and all but one are champions in various venues. The lone non-champion was Dasher, our own dog out of the Dancer’s first litter. Dasher was rarely competed but did have several field trial placements. Most importantly, we valued his qualities and strengths—and he proved crucial to the line’s continuation.

Perhaps it was beginner’s luck or serendipity, or both, but our strategy worked. Through almost three decades, we’ve continued our pointer line and are now producing the sixth generation.

Northwoods Vixen (CH Westfall’s Black Ice x Northwoods Prancer, 2011)
© Chris Mathan Sporting Dogs

We’ve kept the reindeer theme blithely started with Dancer. Just this year with our youngest female, we ran out of reindeer so Dahlia is the first of our flower-themed pointers.

Dancer (CH Northern Dancer x CH Vanidestine’s Rail Lady, 1991)
Dasher (CH Brook’s Elhew Ranger x CH Dance Smartly, 1997)
Prancer (Dashaway x Fallset Fate, 2008)
Vixen (CH Westfall’s Black Ice x Northwoods Prancer, 2011)
Blitzen (CH Elhew G Force x Northwoods Vixen, 2016)
Comet (HOF CH Rock Acre Blackhawk x Northwoods Vixen, 2018)
Cupid and Rudolph (CH Southern Confidence x Northwoods Comet, 2023)
Dahlia (CH Miller’s Upgraded Version x Northwoods Comet, 2024)

Cupid and Dahlia are next in line to continue our pointer breeding program and will, hopefully, produce the seventh generation.

Passionate hunters from states in all parts of the country—east to west, north to south and every place in between—own pointers from our breeding. As mentioned at the beginning of this post, Jerry and I are so proud. We’re thrilled to give our pointer puppies their best lives possible with these truly wonderful people.

Murphy (CH Elhew G Force x Northwoods Vixen, 2016)
~ Tony and Cheryl Follen, Montana

Northwoods Juniper (HOF CH True Confidence x Northwoods Comet, 2021)
~ Joey Paxman and Amanda Allpress, Montana

Northwoods Timber (CH Miller’s Upgraded Version x Northwoods Comet, 2024)
~ Randy Ott and Kim Olson, Minnesota

Northwoods Easy Keeper (CH Miller’s Upgraded Version x Northwoods Comet, 2024)
~ Joey Paxman and Amanda Allpress, Montana

Attie (CH Southern Confidence x Northwoods Comet, 2023)
~ Jeff and Carol Hintz, Arizona

Jade (HOF CH Rock Acre Blackhawk x Northwoods Vixen, 2015)
~ Frank Ilijanic, Michigan

Jordy (CH Elhew G Force x Northwoods Prancer, 2014)
~ Mark and Janie Fouts, Wisconsin

Belle (CH Southern Confidence x Northwoods Comet, 2023)
~ Kevin Sipple, Wisconsin

Lacey (CH Elhew G Force x Northwoods Vixen, 2016)
~ Brian Smith, Pennsylvania

Autumnal musings from “Peanuts”

© Peanuts Worldwide LLC

Here are two depictions of autumn as imagined by the brilliant Charles M. Schulz. Only he could have conceived of and drawn Snoopy dancing with a falling leaf.

In the second strip, Woodstock reviews various signs and finds the correct way to fly south.

© Peanuts Worldwide LLC

Even though Schultz died in 2000, the wonderful characters he created are still available in myriad forms, including books, buttons, calendars, lunchboxes, magnets, pins, stuffed animals, memorable television specials (“A Charlie Brown Christmas” is a holiday tradition in our house) and even on spatulas from Williams-Sonoma.

There’s 355 million—the number of world-wide readers of “Peanuts” according to Schulz’s obituary in The New York Times–reasons “Peanuts” is still wildly popular. In addition, Schulz created about 18,250 strips in his almost 50 years of drawing the daily comic and his work has been translated into 20 languages.

“Smoky gold” and other observations from Aldo Leopold about a grouse hunter’s favorite time of year

Photo courtesy of Rob Zimmer

“There are two kinds of hunting: ordinary hunting, and ruffed-grouse hunting.

“There are two places to hunt grouse: ordinary places, and Adams County.

“There are two times to hunt in Adams: ordinary times, and when the tamaracks are smoky gold.”

Thus opens the chapter titled “October” in A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There by Aldo Leopold. He ranks among the very best nature writers of all time. Not only did he deeply understand the true nature of nature but he simply, yet with eloquence and elegance, describes its splendor.

What grouse hunter doesn’t relish the month of October? Previous months can be taken up with various preparations—training and conditioning the dogs, gear preparation, travel plans—but, still, everything is focused on October. It is the perfect time to be walking along a tote road in the woods with dogs.

Leopold continues:

“The tamaracks change from green to yellow when the first frosts have brought woodcock, fox sparrows, and juncos out of the north. Troops of robins are stripping the last white berries from the dogwood thickets, leaving the empty stems as a pink haze against the hill. The creekside alders have shed their leaves, exposing here and there an eyeful of holly. Brambles are aglow, lighting your footsteps grouseward.”

Several paragraphs later, Leopold notes:

“The tamaracks grow not only in the swamp, but at the foot of the bordering upland, where springs break forth. Each spring has become choked with moss, which forms a boggy terrace. I call these terraces the hanging gardens, for out of their sodden muck the fringed gentians have lifted blue jewels. Such an October gentian, dusted with tamarack gold, is worth a full stop and a long look, even when the dog signals grouse ahead.”

Tamarack (Larix laricina) is a member of the Larix, or Larch, genus and Pinaceae, or Pine, family. Another name is the Eastern Larch. While the tree is a conifer (cone-bearing) and produces needles, it isn’t an evergreen. Instead, this genus is cool because its needles are deciduous and so are shed in the fall.
Photo courtesy of Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy

Leopold finishes the first section:

“Lunch over, I regard a phalanx of young tamaracks, their golden lances thrusting skyward. Under each the needles of yesterday fall to earth building a blanket of smoky gold; at the tip of each the bud of tomorrow, preformed, poised, awaits another spring.”

Leopold’s final sentence of the chapter:

“I sometimes think the other months were constituted mainly as a fitting interlude between Octobers, and I suspect that dogs, and perhaps grouse, share the same view.”