By comparison
By Nick Simonson
It isn’t fair to compare hunting dogs, not among friends or fellow hunters, or even among the different ones owned throughout a person’s lifetime. It isn’t fair, but we do it anyway. I was spoiled with my first lab, Gunnar, who lived for 15 and a half years and hunted for 13 of them. He was an adept field companion who trained me more than I trained him. He’d creep up on a scent line and drop his head so low to the ground when he went on point that he nearly disappeared into the grass. His right paw would cock, and his tail would bend at an angle making him look like a pent-up spring ready to go off, and he would on command. He was lean, and when in perfect fall shape came in at just under 75 pounds, able to weave his way through the tightest brush and around and under matted cattails in a slough to find birds without making a sound. In late season, he could take on the deepest cover and barely rattle the frosting of snow up until a bird exploded out from the white-and-brown rooftop. In the overlap of Gunnar’s final non-hunting years, I purchased Ole. Hoping to find
a smaller, slender lab, I knew my second dog would be the opposite as I inspected the litter at the farm in central Minnesota.
