LOCAL DOG TRAINER, HUNTER TEACHES HIS DOGS NEW TRICKS, ENTERS COMPETITION

Dale Schmidt of Gordonville poses with Mushroom, ne of a number of German shorthaired pointers he and his father have bred over the years.

With Mushroom firmly pointing a bobwhite quail, Schmidt walks in to flush the bird. Field trial dogs such as Mushroom are judged on all areas of hunting including finding birds, pointing and retrieving.

Schmidt prepares to accept a retrieve from Mushroom.

For Dale Schmidt of Gordonville, it began while quail hunting in Oklahoma with a German shorthaired pointer named Yogi.

Schmidt was eight-years-old then and wasn't old enough to carry a gun on these early hunts but seeing his dog get the scent of birds in his nose, follow that scent frantically for a moment or two and then, finally, when the scent of the bird was just too much and the bird was far too close to risk the move of another muscle, to see that dog stop dead still and as rigid as a taut spring -- well, that was enough for the young boy. He's been an aficionado of bird dogs and upland bird hunting ever since.

Now grown and with children of his own, Schmidt is continuing a 30-year love affair with pointing dogs and bird hunting that got its start on an open field in Oklahoma many years ago. Schmidt has helped organize a National Shoot to Retrieve field trial for pointing breeds held yesterday and today at the Two-Bit Field Trial Club near Perryville.

He's seen hundreds of gun dogs in the years since his baptism in the sport and remains as impressed now as he was years ago when he first saw how many centuries of careful breeding can result in the natural drive and single-mindedness of purpose with which a pointing dog goes at his work.

"To watch a dog work and see the instinct and see how they can tell the difference between a meadowlark and a quail by scent -- it amazes me," Schmidt said.

Breeds such as the English pointer, English setter, Brittany spaniel and German shorthaired pointer are the more popular strains of a group of dogs known collectively as the "pointing breeds." The name stems from their instinctive tendency to locate gamebirds such as quail and pheasants purely by scent and, once located, reveal the location of those birds by holding rigidly still with the nose "pointed" at the game.

Schmidt and his father have been breeding and training their own German shorthaired pointers from a bloodline which began over 30 years ago following the death of that first pointer, Yogi.

"We lost that old shorthair while I was on a hunting trip with a friend of mine who lived nearby here," said Schmidt. Seated on the front lawn of his parents' home north of Fruitland, he points to a home just up the road which belonged to this childhood friend.

"We had had a pretty good day that day and shot a lot of quail and on our way over here, we flushed a covey of quail and shot a couple from that one," he explained.

"Yogi went to retrieve one of the downed birds and while he was gone, another bird flushed and flew downhill and my friend shot. When he did that, he hit the dog.

"Yogi came back to me with three pellets in his chest and died in my lap," said Schmidt. "I never hunted with that boy again."

It was a sad occurrence for the young Schmidt but not long afterward, his mother took him to Cape Girardeau where they bought another German shorthaired pointer, which the family named Chocolate.

Chocolate was bred from bench stock, that is, she and her littermates were bred primarily for their looks on the bench of a dog show, with little regard for their "nose" or hunting ability.

However, the instinct which results from centuries of breeding prevailed and the dog immediately took to hunting. Chocolate proved herself so valuable as a hunter that she became the foundation for a bloodline of German shorthaired pointers which the Schmidts have been developing for over 30 years. Dogs from this original bloodline have been sold locally and in neighboring states.

In addition to breeding and selling the gun dogs, the Schmidts also kept many of the pups for themselves, breeding and training them for use in quail hunts in the area and for an occasional pheasant hunt in Iowa.

Competition was far from the minds of Dale and Richard Schmidt when they began breeding their German shorthaired pointers; they bred the dogs to go on fall quail hunting trips. However, it was during one of these excursions that Dale was introduced to the sport known as field trialing.

Schmidt, a salesman for Clarklift of Cape, Inc., invited one of his St. Louis clients to Southeast Missouri for a day of quail hunting.

The client, Mark Kolhberg, had for many years competed in field trials, a competition in which dogs compete against one another to determine which dog can locate, or point, the most quail during a 30-minute heat.

"When [Kolhberg] saw how my dogs pointed and retrieved naturally, he said, 'You've got to get these dogs into shoot-to-retrieve,'" said Schmidt, explaining that Kolhberg largely participated in events sponsored by the National Shoot to Retrieve Association.

"I thought about it for a few months and didn't really do anything and then I found out about a field trial at Perryville and so I went," he added.

At this first event, Schmidt took the older of his two dogs, a shorthair named Yogi Von Baron III, and although the dog had never hunted in competition before, he was able to locate nine birds during the event, a very respectable showing even for a field trial veteran.

However, because the dog had for many years hunted only wary wild birds, the slower, pen-raised birds used in field trials were pretty new to his dog.

When found by a dog, wild birds will typically crouch into the grass until the very last possible moment and then attempt to escape by springing (or flushing) into the air to fly away.

Pen-raised birds, however, are generally much slower than wild ones and will often try to escape a bird dog on foot. This presented some pretty funny situations for a dog bred for hunting.

"Yogi went out there and I think he saw these birds running and said, 'Hey, here's a freebie. I better get this one.' He would walk over to the birds pick them up and bring them back."

To do so, explained Schmidt, counted against the dog in judging because the dogs are scored not only on the number of birds found but on their "manner," or the way that they hunt, stay staunchly on point and retrieve the bird once it is downed. Despite the loss of points, it was a good showing for the first time out.

Since that time, Schmidt and his dogs have become more and more involved in competitive field trialing, thanks in part to the help of Perryville native Randy Perkins.

Schmidt met Perkins during his first field trial at Perryville and since that time, he has learned many of the "ins-and-outs" of the sport from Perkins, a 10-year veteran of National Shoot to Retrieve Association events whose own dogs have earned NSTRA Dog of the Year honors and placed in the NSTRA's Champion of Champions event.