Mundo what kind of range do you get with Rabidou dogs on the prairie
Are they natural backers
Any time you take a dog up to the prairie from Texas they will open up.. It is more a question of how far you let them range and confidence rather than breeding. Think about it--dog is hunted a season in S. Texas in some pretty brushy nasty areas. Next fall you take them to prairie to open the season and they find they can see forever, that there is almost no cactus, no spines and fairly short grass. Some of his dogs backed naturally--however most of the dogs I got from John went North with him for one summer as I was working then and training time was more limited. When they came home they all backed.
In the past--depending on the situation-- we have let dogs range out to 500 on the prairie before bringing them in. Part of this is because birds will run if you work your dog with a lot of huPs and whistles--especially around Pierre where they all have ph.ds in bird dog. Because my buddy and I generally take our entire quail string north-- 8-10 dogs between us--we sometimes run as many as 4 dogs at a time if they are experienced and will back -- it is really a sight to see 4 dogs at once on point. If you are willing to risk a bump you can run one young dog with 3 older dogs you know will back. Young dogs seem to be more likely to back when all the experienced dogs go on point. Plus if you have four good dogs on point it is harder for birds to run out and pretty easy to predict their direction of flight.
The dog that John offered to replace was a skeptic and wouldn't make much effort unless she saw the other dogs get up birds. We would let her up on the truck before she worked so she would see other dogs on birds and get interested. She was a decent dead bird finder, always backed and would allow us to lift her over net fence to trail birds on the other side--50% of the time when we did this the birds ran the fence line and crossed onto our side where her bracemate would point them. She had a high degree of situation timidity so we didn't hesitate to hunt her on snakey days because she wouldn't mess with anything didn't smell like birds. She stopped on snakes and backed off or was called off several times. She is the only dud I got from Rabidou.