You have been working with your new bird-dog pup since her arrival last spring, and she is coming along nicely. She’s a cracker-jack pointer and retrieves almost flawlessly. All you need to complete the circle is to get her into a real hunting situation, and to paraphrase the late dog writer, David Micheal Duffy, “get a bird down in front of your dog.”

It’s opening day of the general upland opener and you make a short drive to an isolated patch of sagebrush that always has a covey of Hungarian partridge. She hasn’t been running for more than five minutes when she slams into a picture-perfect point. You hurriedly walk to her and give her a reassuring, “Whoa girl,” before the covey explodes in front of her nose, startling both of you. You recover in time to start shooting and empty your sho

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