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| Wild Apple Jack |
My breeding goal is to produce more dogs like Wild Apple Jack. There have always been two distinct camps among breeders — those who line breed trying to maintain a consistent outcome and those who take two excellent individuals and try to capture lightening in a bottle. Bob Wehle did both. He carefully line breed his Elhew pointers and then infused his line with judicious outcrosses to exemplary dogs like Dunn’s Fearless Bud, Guard Rail, Hook’s Bounty Hunter, and others. One of the tricks of all this is finding the common thread — the dog or dogs whose attributes seem to replicate themselves in their offspring. One of the most important common threads in Jack’s pedigree is Elhew Fibber McGee. Fibber is the sire of Jack’s dam (Elhew Liebotschaner) and the grandsire of Jack’s sire (Wynot Ace) and a dog whose record stands out among the Elhew sires breed by Wehle in his later years. To maintain that common thread going forward it seems reasonable to bring more Fibber blood back into the kennel for the future. Unfortunately Fibber is no longer with us.
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| Elhew Fibber McGee |
So, I looked around for what I considered the best of the current crop of Fibber sons. There are a two standouts who happen to be from the same breeding — Cassique’s Boss and Elhew G Force. Both have won major championships on wild birds in the South and look a lot like Fibber despite the fact that their dam is not an Elhew dog (but that’s not necessarily bad). By chance, Jim Tande, who winters in Georgia bred a nice bitch of his to Elhew G Force and I’m going to look at one or two of those to raise and compete with. They are expected in early February. Ken Delong who owns Jack’s sister, Wild Apple Faith, is planning to breed her this winter and she is due in heat any day now. Ken has made arrangements to breed to G Force as well and I expect to get one. Hopefully one of those puppies will workout and be ready to breed Wild Apple Samantha and/or Wild Apple Moon Glow in the future.
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| Elhew G Force |
In addition to the G Force puppies there are some other puppies coming north for the summer program which will get them started in the woods on wild birds. All of the puppies in last summer’s program had pointed wild birds shot for them last fall. Indian Creek Triple Rail has moved on to Scott Chaffee in Michigan and he’s bred her to Autumn Snow (a really nice son of Autumn Moon) those pups are due in early March and at least one is coming our way.
Down here in Kentucky I have met Derek Caudill who bred his real nice Elhew bred bitch to Chase Hill Little Bud and had seven puppies earlier this month. The thought is I’ll start one for Derek and get at least one for myself as well. With the mixture of Elhew blood with that of the dog that has 30 plus championship titles in all types of venues from the woodcock cover of NewBrunswick to the Piney Woods of the South we should have some exciting puppies.
I won’t be keeping all these puppies but you can bet the ones that don’t look like field trial dogs and breeding stock will make some great wild bird dogs. Some of these pups will be available as started puppies in September. Contact me if you’re interested.
