What do you think?
Rate this book
Fool Hen Blues: Retrievers & Shotguns and the American West
This book is a reflective account of decades experience wing-shooting in the American west. Waterfowl and upland game are both referenced, with special emphasis on the role of the versatile retriever. While the tone is lyrical and descriptive, the text contains a wealth of practical information as well.
- GenresDogs
185 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1994
6 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 21, 2025
I love a good book filled with stories of hunting dogs. This one had enough stories to make me happy. What makes it different is the bird hunting books I have read before are primarily with pointers, setters, and Brittany’s but in this one the author uses Labrador’s to hunt birds. Labs are of course good for duck hunting, but he also uses them on various other game birds to flush them out for him to get a crack at hitting them with his shotgun.
There is also some mention of Chesapeake Bay retrievers as a friend with one sometimes accompanies him on his hunts. I like hearing of the comparison between all the breeds, and enjoy how the author is unapologetically biased.
I like saving quotes from the different bird dog hunting dog books I read on the rivalry between Pointers and Setters, so the third choice was a new experience. I have a feeling fans of those dogs may even scoff at using a Lab for the job and some aspects of how he trains them. The author speaks plainly on his thoughts regarding labs:
‘While I have great respect for the pointing breeds, I remain a hopeless afficionado of the Labrador retriever. I love Labs; don’t ask me to explain. We just seem to understand each other and to approach the world with a fundamentally similar set of priorities, an admission with which certain co-workers and an ex-wife would no doubt agree. Because I make it a point to live in places where I can hunt a lot, my kennel has to be productive. It also has to be versatile, since any given day here on the prairie might provide the opportunity to hunt everything from Huns to geese. Sure, I could have Labs and more traditional upland bird dogs, but every place in the kennel occupied by something other than a Lab would be. well, one less Lab in my life. I told you not to ask for explanations.
These circumstances have led me to accumulate more than my share of experience with flushing retrievers, dogs that have never enjoyed the reputation they deserve in sophisticated wingshooting circles. They are all too often dismissed as dogs that couldn’t make it by “real” retriever standards, or as an unsophisticated hunter’s poor substitute for a properly trained pointer.’
This theme on the choice of dog breed for hunting is covered in various places in the book:
‘The world of wingshooting is a broad one, especially here in the West where a weekend of hunting may well put an ambitious gun in front of a half-dozen varieties of game in settings that range from duck blinds to alpine meadows. For those of us who cannot distinguish the hunt from the dog, this embarrassment of riches poses a real problem. One approach is to have a kennel full of specialists, and to choose among several breeds whenever you venture into the field. The other is to find a generalist, a dog that will do everything.
In the best of all possible worlds, we would have the time and resources to manage the first option. Wide-ranging pointers for Huns, tightly controlled Brittanys for pheasants, hard-charging Chessies for cold water...the possibilities go on. One hesitates to imagine all the game that could be harvested. One also hesitates to imagine the time required to train all those breeds, not to mention the dog food bill.
In fact, the appeal of getting lots of hunting out of one dog goes far beyond dollars, cents, and time. Those who hunt with specialists, for example, might well have walked right on by the pheasant hunt described at the beginning of this chapter. There is a lot to be said for having the right dog with you at all times in the field, and the easiest way to make that happen is to insure that the dog you have can hunt anything that comes along.’
I love learning things about how the dogs are trained. One aspect of dogs retrieving ducks and other birds from water was not something I would have thought about. For game birds on land, it is a different way of thinking for the dogs. They are often trained using pigeons. Here are a few passages on aspects I found interesting:
‘Late season dog work is an art in its own right. The heroic potential of retrievers in cold water is obvious, but cold is only part of the challenge. The concept of moving water is foreign to retriever instincts and much of their traditional education. After all, we spend great effort teaching our dogs to mark and hunt tenaciously where the bird falls. Late season dog work almost always takes place over flowing water, where simple physics assure that the traditional approach to getting dogs and dead ducks in the same place won’t work. I have watched more than one experienced retriever spend his first morning on the creek treading water in frustration while his quarry floated downstream and out of his life. It is often the best trained visiting dogs that turn in the most pathetic performances here.’
‘And so, in this part of the country, we train our dogs in all sorts heretical ways. They are introduced to moving water as puppies and taught the concept of “downstream” from the time they first start to retrieve. They learn to negotiate sweepers and tricky currents under controlled conditions, during the summer, when we can be in the water to help them. And with apologies to the strict traditionalists in the crowd, we encourage them to run the banks. With a handful of dead mallards floating downstream, knowing the shortest way to the ducks may mean the difference between retrieves and losses. These compromises lead to their own style of dog work at which purists are free to scoff, but the retrieve itself is the final measure of accomplishment in the field.
‘I do not train my dogs to be steady to wing and shot because I don’t want them to be. When birds are down, I prefer that they be busy doing their job rather than looking stylish. Sonny is already halfway back with the first bird in his mouth as Nick and I reload, check our safeties, and regroup.’
‘It is important to bear in mind that training a flushing retriever involves a fundamental shift in the dog’s sensory orientation to the world around him. Classical retriever training emphasizes what the dog can see, but you are going to have to emphasize what the dog can smell.’
‘Once warm feathers are a matter of routine, it’s time to start letting the dog learn to track. Begin by having the dog watch a shackled pigeon wander away in front of him on open ground. The dog will be tracking visually, but there will be plenty of time to work on his nose later. The idea at first is simply to enforce the notion that the object of the retrieve—the highest form of reward to a retriever—is a moving target rather than a static one.’
‘When he can do this satisfactorily, you can start releasing the bird prior to the dog’s arrival in the training area. This is the time to make the philosophical transition from “fetch” to “hunt.” It is more than a matter of vocabulary. I stop giving the dog precise directions at this point, because that implies that I know just where the bird is, when, under actual hunting conditions, I won’t. All you are supposed to do is introduce the dog to the area to be hunted; finding the bird is now his responsibility. Release the dog from heel and let him find the scent line on his own. While the retrieve itself will serve as his reward, it never hurts to lavish a little praise on your charge for a job well done.’
‘All honeymoons must end, and in the case of the versatile retriever, this transition takes place during the dog’s second hunting season. It is no longer enough to have fun—the dog must now start to do what you want him to do in the field. By this time, the dog should have enough positive experience behind him to know that he isn’t being punished for going hunting. One of the Labrador retriever’s most endearing personality traits is the ability to absorb discipline constructively. Faced with the need for discipline in the field, goldens may go to pieces and Chessies are likely to respond with maddening indifference, while Labs typically act mortified just long enough to let you know that you have made your point, and then it’s back to business. The second season in the field is the time to take fullest advantage of this characteristic.’
There are some great stories on duck hunting and how bravely the dogs pursue their targets. At one point the author makes this statement followed by an example of a retrieve over ice.
‘We do ask a lot of our dogs, and in the spirit of intellectual honesty, seems worth asking whether we sometimes ask more than we should.’
Lots of great stories of him and his dogs. I liked the image that comes to mind within this excerpt:
‘So why get so excited about a wet dog lunging wildly into a pond? |f you have to ask, you have either never seen it done right, or I probably cannot help you.
A heart-stopping water entry invokes that sense of passion alluded to in an earlier chapter, the feeling that may be our culture’s answer to the bullfight. For an instant, the animal’s judgment is utterly suspended as jt surrenders to its instincts without regard for the consequences. Coming from our own structured world, we need this sort of thing from time to time, even if we have to experience it by proxy through our dogs.
If you are hunting with a Lab, much of this will be done for you, and devotion doesn’t get any more sincere, especially if the body of water in question is full of ice. Of course, if you are hunting with a Chessie, the dog will be doing it all for himself, but you are still welcome to watch. Either way, the water entry, properly performed, can be viewed as both a necessary and sufficient reason to be there.’
Of course, there is a lot of good information on hunting and some discussion on shot guns, but after describing the shotguns he owns, he sums things up with this:
‘Let us admit what we already know: We acquire more guns than we need, not because doing so will help us hit more and miss less, but because we enjoy their company. The theoretical union of function and beauty can reach no fuller expression.’
For those worried about the dog dying in the end, there is some references to that, but nothing I thought was too drawn out and painful. I liked this thought he expressed on losing a dog:
‘I missed my dog, and not just because I would never shoot as many birds without him. I missed him because he defined one segment of my life, and now that chapter was over.’
In short, a great book I would recommend. I have some other quotes I would like to share but felt I have enough in this review so I will try to post them separately against the book in Goodreads. (Sometimes if I try to add several in a review it starts giving me and error.) Well, maybe one more quote on his suggestion on what retriever breed to choose for versatile hunting:
1) Don’t start with a Chessie unless you have had some prior training experience and are willing to commit a substantial amount of time to the dog;
2) Don’t start with a golden if the job description involves a lot of hardcore water work; and
3) Do yourself a favor and start with a Lab in the first place.
There is also some mention of Chesapeake Bay retrievers as a friend with one sometimes accompanies him on his hunts. I like hearing of the comparison between all the breeds, and enjoy how the author is unapologetically biased.
I like saving quotes from the different bird dog hunting dog books I read on the rivalry between Pointers and Setters, so the third choice was a new experience. I have a feeling fans of those dogs may even scoff at using a Lab for the job and some aspects of how he trains them. The author speaks plainly on his thoughts regarding labs:
‘While I have great respect for the pointing breeds, I remain a hopeless afficionado of the Labrador retriever. I love Labs; don’t ask me to explain. We just seem to understand each other and to approach the world with a fundamentally similar set of priorities, an admission with which certain co-workers and an ex-wife would no doubt agree. Because I make it a point to live in places where I can hunt a lot, my kennel has to be productive. It also has to be versatile, since any given day here on the prairie might provide the opportunity to hunt everything from Huns to geese. Sure, I could have Labs and more traditional upland bird dogs, but every place in the kennel occupied by something other than a Lab would be. well, one less Lab in my life. I told you not to ask for explanations.
These circumstances have led me to accumulate more than my share of experience with flushing retrievers, dogs that have never enjoyed the reputation they deserve in sophisticated wingshooting circles. They are all too often dismissed as dogs that couldn’t make it by “real” retriever standards, or as an unsophisticated hunter’s poor substitute for a properly trained pointer.’
This theme on the choice of dog breed for hunting is covered in various places in the book:
‘The world of wingshooting is a broad one, especially here in the West where a weekend of hunting may well put an ambitious gun in front of a half-dozen varieties of game in settings that range from duck blinds to alpine meadows. For those of us who cannot distinguish the hunt from the dog, this embarrassment of riches poses a real problem. One approach is to have a kennel full of specialists, and to choose among several breeds whenever you venture into the field. The other is to find a generalist, a dog that will do everything.
In the best of all possible worlds, we would have the time and resources to manage the first option. Wide-ranging pointers for Huns, tightly controlled Brittanys for pheasants, hard-charging Chessies for cold water...the possibilities go on. One hesitates to imagine all the game that could be harvested. One also hesitates to imagine the time required to train all those breeds, not to mention the dog food bill.
In fact, the appeal of getting lots of hunting out of one dog goes far beyond dollars, cents, and time. Those who hunt with specialists, for example, might well have walked right on by the pheasant hunt described at the beginning of this chapter. There is a lot to be said for having the right dog with you at all times in the field, and the easiest way to make that happen is to insure that the dog you have can hunt anything that comes along.’
I love learning things about how the dogs are trained. One aspect of dogs retrieving ducks and other birds from water was not something I would have thought about. For game birds on land, it is a different way of thinking for the dogs. They are often trained using pigeons. Here are a few passages on aspects I found interesting:
‘Late season dog work is an art in its own right. The heroic potential of retrievers in cold water is obvious, but cold is only part of the challenge. The concept of moving water is foreign to retriever instincts and much of their traditional education. After all, we spend great effort teaching our dogs to mark and hunt tenaciously where the bird falls. Late season dog work almost always takes place over flowing water, where simple physics assure that the traditional approach to getting dogs and dead ducks in the same place won’t work. I have watched more than one experienced retriever spend his first morning on the creek treading water in frustration while his quarry floated downstream and out of his life. It is often the best trained visiting dogs that turn in the most pathetic performances here.’
‘And so, in this part of the country, we train our dogs in all sorts heretical ways. They are introduced to moving water as puppies and taught the concept of “downstream” from the time they first start to retrieve. They learn to negotiate sweepers and tricky currents under controlled conditions, during the summer, when we can be in the water to help them. And with apologies to the strict traditionalists in the crowd, we encourage them to run the banks. With a handful of dead mallards floating downstream, knowing the shortest way to the ducks may mean the difference between retrieves and losses. These compromises lead to their own style of dog work at which purists are free to scoff, but the retrieve itself is the final measure of accomplishment in the field.
‘I do not train my dogs to be steady to wing and shot because I don’t want them to be. When birds are down, I prefer that they be busy doing their job rather than looking stylish. Sonny is already halfway back with the first bird in his mouth as Nick and I reload, check our safeties, and regroup.’
‘It is important to bear in mind that training a flushing retriever involves a fundamental shift in the dog’s sensory orientation to the world around him. Classical retriever training emphasizes what the dog can see, but you are going to have to emphasize what the dog can smell.’
‘Once warm feathers are a matter of routine, it’s time to start letting the dog learn to track. Begin by having the dog watch a shackled pigeon wander away in front of him on open ground. The dog will be tracking visually, but there will be plenty of time to work on his nose later. The idea at first is simply to enforce the notion that the object of the retrieve—the highest form of reward to a retriever—is a moving target rather than a static one.’
‘When he can do this satisfactorily, you can start releasing the bird prior to the dog’s arrival in the training area. This is the time to make the philosophical transition from “fetch” to “hunt.” It is more than a matter of vocabulary. I stop giving the dog precise directions at this point, because that implies that I know just where the bird is, when, under actual hunting conditions, I won’t. All you are supposed to do is introduce the dog to the area to be hunted; finding the bird is now his responsibility. Release the dog from heel and let him find the scent line on his own. While the retrieve itself will serve as his reward, it never hurts to lavish a little praise on your charge for a job well done.’
‘All honeymoons must end, and in the case of the versatile retriever, this transition takes place during the dog’s second hunting season. It is no longer enough to have fun—the dog must now start to do what you want him to do in the field. By this time, the dog should have enough positive experience behind him to know that he isn’t being punished for going hunting. One of the Labrador retriever’s most endearing personality traits is the ability to absorb discipline constructively. Faced with the need for discipline in the field, goldens may go to pieces and Chessies are likely to respond with maddening indifference, while Labs typically act mortified just long enough to let you know that you have made your point, and then it’s back to business. The second season in the field is the time to take fullest advantage of this characteristic.’
There are some great stories on duck hunting and how bravely the dogs pursue their targets. At one point the author makes this statement followed by an example of a retrieve over ice.
‘We do ask a lot of our dogs, and in the spirit of intellectual honesty, seems worth asking whether we sometimes ask more than we should.’
Lots of great stories of him and his dogs. I liked the image that comes to mind within this excerpt:
‘So why get so excited about a wet dog lunging wildly into a pond? |f you have to ask, you have either never seen it done right, or I probably cannot help you.
A heart-stopping water entry invokes that sense of passion alluded to in an earlier chapter, the feeling that may be our culture’s answer to the bullfight. For an instant, the animal’s judgment is utterly suspended as jt surrenders to its instincts without regard for the consequences. Coming from our own structured world, we need this sort of thing from time to time, even if we have to experience it by proxy through our dogs.
If you are hunting with a Lab, much of this will be done for you, and devotion doesn’t get any more sincere, especially if the body of water in question is full of ice. Of course, if you are hunting with a Chessie, the dog will be doing it all for himself, but you are still welcome to watch. Either way, the water entry, properly performed, can be viewed as both a necessary and sufficient reason to be there.’
Of course, there is a lot of good information on hunting and some discussion on shot guns, but after describing the shotguns he owns, he sums things up with this:
‘Let us admit what we already know: We acquire more guns than we need, not because doing so will help us hit more and miss less, but because we enjoy their company. The theoretical union of function and beauty can reach no fuller expression.’
For those worried about the dog dying in the end, there is some references to that, but nothing I thought was too drawn out and painful. I liked this thought he expressed on losing a dog:
‘I missed my dog, and not just because I would never shoot as many birds without him. I missed him because he defined one segment of my life, and now that chapter was over.’
In short, a great book I would recommend. I have some other quotes I would like to share but felt I have enough in this review so I will try to post them separately against the book in Goodreads. (Sometimes if I try to add several in a review it starts giving me and error.) Well, maybe one more quote on his suggestion on what retriever breed to choose for versatile hunting:
1) Don’t start with a Chessie unless you have had some prior training experience and are willing to commit a substantial amount of time to the dog;
2) Don’t start with a golden if the job description involves a lot of hardcore water work; and
3) Do yourself a favor and start with a Lab in the first place.
December 30, 2009
This author writes for several periodicals and I enjoy them monthly until I found books he had authored. This is a different view of hunting than I believe the public is aware of. The focus is on the relationship with his dogs, his wife and father that join him and the land they choose to live on.
November 18, 2012
This is one of the best books on bird hunting in the west. In fact, Don Thomas is one of the best living outdoor writers. I love Fool Hen Blues and highly recommend it!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews