Humans have shared their lives with dogs for tens of thousands of years, and have been hunting with them for millennia. Whether it's in Oregon or elsewhere, some dogs retrieve shot birds, some track game by sight or smell, some try to catch your quarry for you, while others just point out where it's hiding. Some, such as terriers, hunt on their own as cats do with mice and rats.
The best-loved of dogs have often been those that hunt alongside humans, using their fine senses to lead their masters to the prey, and their courage to engage animals that often can easily kill or maim a canine attacker before the hunter can dispatch it.
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From borzois to bassets, from retrievers to ridgehounds, dogs have been bred to find, chase, and sometimes attack game, sometimes, as with wolfhounds and foxhounds, very specific game.
In what is possibly the greatest novel ever written, "War and Peace," Leo Tolstoy devotes a long section to a description of a wolf hunt in a remote province of Russia, giving the names of the dogs involved.
Art from ancient Greek pottery to classic European and American painting show men with weapons standing by their dogs, ready for the hunt.
Most U.S. states allow hunting with dogs, but restrict it to certain animals. When hunting in Oregon, the only small game which you may track with dogs is bobcat, raccoon, and fox, along with unspecified "unprotected mammals."
Another regulation includes the western gray squirrel on this list, but generally you may not hunt game mammals with dogs. You are specifically prohibited from using dogs to track cougars or bears, or to tree them, possibly because this has been a traditional practice that has suppressed populations of those critters.
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Birds, of course, are another story: dogs are traditional in bird hunting, and Oregon accepts their use as a matter of course. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife offers breezy tips on hunting upland game birds with dogs, and canine assistance is allowed in certain other circumstances.
For example, you can use dogs to hunt turkey in the fall, but not in spring. In fact, in some waterfowl haunts, such as Malheur Lake, use of dogs is "strongly encouraged."
As usual, rules may change as wildlife populations grow or fade, so check with the ODFW before you and Rover pack up and head out on the trail.
This article is for information only. Please check current regulations before hunting.
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