Pointers vs. Flushers: Who Really is The King of the Uplands?

How skilled are you at training? What environments do you tend to hunt in? What’s your quarry of choice? The answers to these questions, and about a million more, can usher you one way or another on the path to a specific breed.

Upland hunters all have their reasons for going with one dog breed over another, but the group as a whole is generally split into two factions. On one side, you have the pointer folks, and the other side, you have the diehard flusher fans.

There are some stereotypes on both sides that will get me into trouble if I point them out, but I’m going to anyway. You can think of pointer owners sort of like the flyfisherman who wouldn’t be caught dead with a barb on his hook. He doesn’t take a trophy photo without his rod clenched in his teeth, and if you tried to offer him a domestic beer instead of a microbrewery craft beer, he’d probably look at you as if you just took a dump on his rug.

The flusher owner will take that domestic beer, and about 13 more, while he tells you stories about the good old days of high school football. He’ll fish for the same trout, but with a spinning rod and a dozen nightcrawlers. Some of those trout will end up on the grill, and if you look down on that and mention it to his face, he might throw a quick jab at your schnoz.

All jokes aside, there are plenty of things to consider when choosing between pointers and flushers. One of the most obvious (and most important), is to think about hunting style.

Pointers are independent hunters. They don’t need you to help them do their job, and honestly, wouldn’t appreciate you trying. Flushers are different. They don’t work well without you in close proximity, and if the team dynamic breaks down, the wheels come off fast.

If you have big country to hunt, or just love the idea of taking things slow while your dog covers ground to find birds, pointers are a no-brainer. Some people want to take it easy and then confidently walk up to exactly where a bird is hiding. That tripod point with a statue-still dog soaking up the good stuff in its snout is a moment that never gets old. It’s one of the biggest things pointer hunters are hooked on, and for good reason.

Now, that comes with the price of not really working as a team to find the birds. Flusher owners view things differently.

They want the whole thing to happen in tandem, with the dog sticking close while they wade into the mix with them. They want the checkbacks, the whipping tail that goes from windshield wiper to helicopter, and the chaos of not exactly knowing when or where a bird is going to flush. They view the lead-up to the flush and the aftermath of a downed bird as all a part of the same, awesome thing.

As the saying goes, different strokes….

This is general stuff here, but often holds true—pointers take a higher level of training than flushers. If you’re not overly confident in your ability to mold a dog into a perfect hunting machine, you might want a flusher.

These dogs, whether you opt for a Lab, golden, or maybe an English cocker, have a long history of working with people. This is a huge benefit when you train them. They also often have a built-in retrieving desire that can really be elevated with the right puppy training, which means rewarding these dogs is simple and effective.

Pointers, on the other hand, with their generally independent nature, take a little more coaxing. This isn’t to say that the average bird dog owner can’t take a well-bred German shorthair and turn it into a rock star in the grouse woods, but it might just take a little finesse.

Again, these are generalities, but it’s a good idea to understand what level of training your chosen breed will probably require and whether you’re up to the task. One of the worst things we can do as dog owners is choose a breed that we aren’t capable of training well.

The English pointer could be thought of as a handcrafted, boning knife. It’s just a work of art built for a specific task, and it’s very, very good at that task. The Labrador retriever is more of a Swiss Army knife. It can do just about anything pretty dang well, and won’t shy away from just about anything you ask of it.

For the southern plantation quail hunter who wouldn’t be caught dead in a pheasant slough, the choice is simple. The weekend warrior who chases woodcock, grouse, pheasants, and ducks with equal effort would return that English pointer to the breeder after a week. He needs the Lab, or some other flusher.

The key to this distinction is to not only be honest about what you definitely will ask of your dog, but what you might hunt with it in the future.

Who really is the king of upland hunting? I’d say flushers, mostly because it’s fun to watch the pointer crowd angrily twirl their handlebar mustaches while figuring out how to insult my mother and her questionable morals. But the truth is, there is no winner.

Good dogs are just good dogs, and there are too many variables to consider for us as individuals to declare one type of dog objectively better than another. It doesn’t work that way. It is fun to think about, and nice to know that no matter where you live, how experienced you are as a trainer, or what birds really blow the wind up your blaze orange skirt, you have plenty of different breeds from which to choose.