Pointer Origins

Netting and Falconry

This was of course before the introduction of firearms, which did not come into general use before the middle of the seventeenth century, and netting and falconry were the normal methods of killing birds. Aitinger writing in 1653 said: "Shooting is a very vulgar method," and "In France they use draw-nets so large that they must be carried by two riders on horseback. In England this form of sport is considered vulgar and in very bad taste, and they use hawks or falcons. When the dog points they let the hawk fly." However, Tanzer writing in 1734 advises that:

"The best way to take partridges, as done by princes and nobles, is to shoot the birds neatly, with a pointing dog; or to take them by a pointing dog and nets. The sort of dog that is used is white and brown marked, or white and speckled, or brown spotted, and the taller and stronger the better the dog, so that he can take the scent high; for pointing dogs should always hunt with their noses high in the air."

He goes on:

"When the dog points he should not be called to, but encouraged with 'Gently' so that he may stand still, until such time as the fowling net can be made ready. Then run rapidly on to the game and the dog, so that the net cover both, and having strangled the game, give the dog some bread. At first the dog will hate the net, but he must be well trained to endure it patiently. As the partridges will not often stay quiet a conveniently long time before the dog, not to mention the net, but scatter themselves away, the hunter must have with him his hawk, which the game will recognise as their enemy, and will crouch upon the ground and hid from it, lying motionless before the pointing dog until the net is brought up."

It is clear from all these contemporary writers that a braque or pointing dog was widely used in France, Italy, Spain and Germany in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The dog appears to have been of a well recognised conformation, and as can be seen from the paintings of Desportes and Oudry in the Louvre and in other galleries, a dog very like our modern German Pointer.

Another indication of the interchange of these dogs throughout Western Europe is the somewhat strange fact that the German hunters to this day often speak to their dogs in French. I think that the tradition has an historical origin, in that down the centuries dogs were constantly being imported from the West, from France. Von Fleming, writing in 1749, remarks upon this tradition and gives the following explanation: "Sportsmen use these French words of command to their dogs so that if they are lost, shall not easily be made use of, as if they were addressed in the Muscovite or Polish speech." This does not seem to be really a very likely explanation of such a widespread custom.