hunt as long nor quite as often as I did in my prime years. If memory serves one year when I kept track there were about 60 days when waterfall and upland bird seasons ran concurrently and I missed only four of them.
But if you do hunt long and hard, you do need more than one dog to get top-flight performance and production day in, day out. How many more is up to you. I offer another personal rule of thumb. When managing and guiding for years at private hunting clubs, I hunted almost seven days a week from mid-September heat to deep snow in December; weekdays on released birds for guests, weekends personal hunting on wild birds. To provide quality dog work for both guests and myself, I needed for five "regulars", two or three " rookies " to spell them from time to time and a pup or two to put down for experience and future needs after the shooting had been good enough so that any puppy goofs wouldn't ruin the hunt.
But while I often hunted a brace of dogs at a time, whether they were spaniels, retrievers or pointers, a strongly suggest that when you decide that you need more than one dog you hunt yours singly. Most hunters have all they can do to handle one dog and a time. But mostly, if you hunt two dogs at the same time, you are defeating the purpose of having an extra dog or two in order to distribute the hunting hours load that bogs down a lone dog.
Consider the work load you are putting on your dog when you hunt hard and often, turn loose one at a time so that you'll have a fresh and efficient dog during their one-three hour peaks and you and your hunting buddies will be able to agree "that dog will hunt."
High Pro Verification
Excuses abound and are often legitimate when applied to hunting dogs. But for field trial dogs which must go "all out" during a time period "running out gas" is a sin; let ups, slow downs and not a "finishing strong" at the end of a "heat" means no award in bird dog competition.
Furthermore, contest winning dogs must be conditioned to show their wares to best advantage during time different time periods which (depending upon the trial format) may be half-hour burst, an endurance event of an hour and a half or more or the ultimate, National Championship held annually for over a century at Grand Junction, Tennessee during which qualified dogs must pour it on in a three hour search for bobwhite quail.
So the comments by three longtime professional trainers who have won national championships and judge numerous championship events regarding what hunters might expect from their sporting dogs are about as authoritative as advice can be.
Freddie Epp: "There's an old saying, 'If he's tired enough he'll point.' But if he's that tired he can't look for birds and his mind is sort of out of gear, too. So don't overwork your dog. You may need more than one dog so you can alternate. A tired dog generally can't point many birds. If you notice the dog weakening, slowing up, getting too many false points, anything showing you've overworked him, don't hunt him so often or get more dogs to hunt with. It takes a very strong dog hunt three to five hours every day. "
Ron Rex Gates: "Never work or hunt a dog until he is completely given out. This is done too many times and has shortened many of dog's life. If a dog is in good condition, covers the ground well and really applies himself, one and a half to two hours is long enough to hunt him if you want your dog to live a normal age."
Collier Smith: "If you've got a dog that's in good shape, I'd think you could hunt him an hour a day for three or maybe four days. The more hours the fewer days. A lot would depend on the terrain; with a lot of briars and stuff like that it might be just one day out of every three or four. By not over hunting a dog you get the most out of him. The dog gets some rest, but he doesn't have enough rest that he's wild and doesn't get so beat up that he's not any good. Work a dog down to a point where he's completely exhausted, that's where he'll pick up a lot of bad habits. Just rooting around, dog gets tired, he gets hard-headed, doesn't listen, then stumbles into something, makes a mistake and one thing leads to another."
(These and other insights into a gun dog training techniques by the above three premier pointing dog trainers, plus the observations of equally qualified retriever, spaniel and versatile hunting dog experts are available in a practical, well illustrated book, EXPERT ADVICE ON GUN DOG TRAINING, by David Michael Duffey, published by New Win Publishing, Inc.)

Dave Duffey hails from Bowler, WI