Stopped cleaning birds one evening this past February and grabbed the camera....WOW!
Already getting my gear ready for fall 2007!

Remembering Bud

I have owned lots of dogs in my lifetime...my first was named 'Carlo", a mixed breed male my dad gave me at age 4. We lived in Hollister, Ok and my grandparents lived on a farm outside Tipton, about 27 miles away. Just prior to summer vacation one year, we took Carlo to stay with my grandparents and I cried as we drove away from their farm. Amazingly, the next morning we woke up and Carlo was on the back porch! We never understood how he found his way and so quickly, but I came to believe that these so called 'dumb creatures' are not so dumb after all!

DJ Bud De Lamont taught me much about dog 'intelligence'. He was picked because of his sheer beauty, clear white with deep orange coloration from a litter by Hall of Famer Rimarda's Trademark and Val De Lamont (daughter of another HOF and Natl Ch., Bean's Blaze) . He was a large pup and, well....'lethargic' is the only word. He was definitely a slow starter, and spent most of the runs on our 'puppy grounds' just standing near the "boss bus' staring at me. I had just about given up on him but one morning turned him loose in our 'thicker country' with an adult hunting dog. Amazingly, he ran, and within the first 50 yards he slammed on point, chased when the birds flushed, then commenced to find and hold two more covies that morning, and he ran with range and class. Bud had just made the team!

He gave me 13 wonderful years and sired, at age 11, one of the finest litters we ever had, which included Austin Annie De Lamont and Hello Dolly De Lamont. Within the last year however, Bud developed a weak heart. His 'desire' when he saw the dog trailer hitched to the Suburban was still there and we determined that as long as he wanted to go....he could go. I ran him very short periods and was able to capture his final point in February '07 on camera (see pix above).

On a rainy morning in April, 2007, I took Bud on his final trip in the Suburban to my friend and caring Vet, Michael Godin . They say the 'good ones never outlive us'...Bud was a good one.

Website is up & running!

The Lamont Brittany website is up and running! http://www.lamontbrittany.com/
It's a site with additions and daily 'tweaking", so check back frequently. Plus, we would love to hear from you, so there is an easy contact page to email me. Thanks to my son Eric (owner of Emmy Lou De Lamont and a couple of young up and comers) for the excellent design of this and the home page and to Sid Farbstein with Bill Young Productions of Houston http://www.billyoungproductions.com for web hosting!

Quail Hunting with a Camera!

I enjoy taking bird hunting pictures! In fact, a Canon EOS 20D increasingly replaces the Winchester 101 as my preferred weapon, although it certainly doesn't do much to fill the 'bag'! Above, my friend and long time Dos Jefes partner Richard Nelson, over "Hello Dolly De Lamont" in February, 2007. (click pix for larger image)

My wife Sharon took this one of Bo Nose De Lamont. It's won it's share of photo contests and even appeared in the American Brittany Magazine. (I learned a lot from Delmar's book, after Bo let me read it!)

Apple De Lamont...one of my favorite head shots. Apple is owned by Dr. & Mrs. Daniel Roe of Pearace, Arizona. She is a small, bundle of energy...a very animated bird dog that has the run of a large ranch in Southern Arizona!

I love this shot of L&M Ramblin Rose, taken 'pre-digital' in 1997 while hunting with George Tilley near Kennedy, Tx. We lost Rose for awhile and spotted her on point, 250 yards across a fence in a neighbor's pasture. Thank goodness for the long zoom. There's something very 'cosmic' about this moment!

Bust to Boom

Population and farming practices aside, “rain” has always been the key to quail populations. It is the ingredient that initiates the entire process…..It’s a simple formula but one which man has (unsuccessfully) been trying to control for decades! This much we 'think' we know....
No rain, no new plant growth (forbs),
No forbs, no insects,
No insects, no food for baby quail!
As I write this, much of Texas and the midwest are being bombarded with enormous rains. The Trinity and Brazos Rivers are above Flood Stages.

The Palmer Drought Severity Index is used by most scientists to gauge ‘drought’. A look at the latest 2007 Palmer Index map is good news for many of us. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/prelim/drought/zimage.html

“Last summer was about as tough on most wildlife as it can get” according to a quote from a TPWD biologist in today’s (6.28.07) Houston Chronicle by outdoor writer Shannon Tomkins. In the article “What a difference a year makes”, one landowner was asked “…when was the last time you have seen this country as green and in as good a shape as it is right now”? The rancher’s one word answer, ”Never”! http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/outdoors/tompkins/4926776.html

The countryside around Falfurrias looks good right now with a world of sunflower, which is normally our signal for a good quail year. So keep your finger’s crossed…’mother nature’ is unpredictable’, but there is good reason for optimism.

Incidentally, a good way to keep up with monthly precipitation levels in our area is by checking in frequently on the Mariposa Ranch's (a close neighbor) website and click on the ‘precipitation’ link. http://www.mariposaranch.net/

Dog Training 101

Stephen Harwood was an amazing man. I had started field-trialing Brittanys around 1977 and was forced to use ‘loaner’ horses to handle the dogs. Borrowing horses is not something an inexperienced, and admittedly fearful, rider wants to do too often! Someone said that a Pointer man living north of Richmond, Tx by the name of Harwood usually kept some good “walking horses’ and might help me find one. I called him and we wound up talking bird dogs for an hour or more. He invited me out to ‘train dogs with him”. Over the next ten years or so, I was the one who ‘got the training’!

Stephen and his wife Lynn lived on 2000 acres or so just west of Houston. Today, much of this country is being developed into fancy houses with immaculate lawns. But back then, it was a dog training ‘Mecca’. With dozens of ‘johnny’ houses full of quail, chucker or pheasant, multiple flight pens for conditioning, and manicured objectives, it was without doubt, the finest dog training facility I had ever seen! My first drive onto “Sundown Kennels”, as it was named after Stephan purchased Ch Elhew Sundown from Robert Wehle, was like a kid’s first visit to FAO Swartz! WOW!

We worked dogs together for a couple of hours that morning. He was gracious and particularly complimentary about my FC Beauregard De Lamont, a large, beautifully-marked Brittany with ‘a good nose and lots of bird sense’. He invited me back….double WOW!

In time, our families became the best of friends…we became Godparents when his two sons were born. We traveled together to trials all over the state of Texas, from Paris to Nixon to Sweetwater. We took training trips to Packsaddle Ranch in Western Oklahoma and to Joe Coleman’s abundant ranch in South Texas. He introduced me to some of the best trainers and amateurs in the game and men who had become legends for their methods… John Killingsworth, Gordon Hazlewood, Harold Ray, and others. Stephen ran a large string of high-tailed pointers with surnames like Elhew, Miller’s, and Sundown and I tagged along with a couple of Brittanys with names like ‘Beau” and “Sis”. But driving into trial grounds with “Mr. Harwood” was like instant credibility and the usual jokes about ‘what happened to that dog’s tail” remained unspoken.

I was like a student at the temple of the guru! Learning how to ‘read’ what a dog was thinking, how to break a dog without breaking its spirit, how to show a dog at the right time, how to communicate to the dog through subtle movements of the horse…even learned how to stay ON a horse!

I had become accustomed to repeating “whoa” a couple of hundred times when my dog had a bird find in a trial….he taught me to have confidence in my dog, to keep my mouth shut, to walk out with my back to the dog, flush birds and fire the blank 410 as if I was downing birds and then slowly and dramatically unload, never looking back at my dog…..that took a confidence level I had never seen before, but boy did judges remember it! He could see when I had ‘overtrained’ and a dog was beginning to look stale, and he would suggest taking the dog squirrel hunting or for a ride to town together to share a burger in the front seat.

He also introduced me to Pete Thuman, who taught us both new ways of doing things. Julian Weslow, a trainer north of Houston, had met Pete on a Nebraska training trip one summer, hired him and started promoting him in the area as the ‘new guru’ of dog training. Stephen called one night and asked me to ride along to watch Pete the next day but I had to work. When I got home, he had called and said simply…”Young, we don’t know “nothing” about dog training!” He hired Pete as his full-time resident trainer and changed everything we had learned about training bird dogs. Pete was a master of the electric training collar, years ahead of the way most of us used them at the time….not as a “correction” tool but as a ‘training’ tool! To watch him yard work dogs was the most amazing, and redundantly boring, thing I had ever seen. Today Pete owns the Pecan Hill Kennels just outside Brookshire, Tx and, in my opinion, he is still a master!

I recall driving in one afternoon and seeing a young pointer male on point in a draw, just west of the main house. A pheasant was tied to a limb nearby and this high-tailed pointer was standing in a majestic, high head, high tail stance. I shut off the engine and watched for 10 minutes or so and finally saw Pete sitting alone a few yards away on a log. I walked over and asked how long he had been there and Pete said ‘about 30 minutes’. Each time the dog’s intensity would even subtly start to relax, he would silently activate a low-level stimulation from the collar and the dog would tighten up again….after another 30 minutes, I walked away shaking my head. This just wasn’t in Delmar’s book!

Stephen had recently come to the decision to quit trialing and return to his earlier passion of Team Roping and all dogs were being sold. In spite of regional successes, he never totally received the national recognition he deserved. Stephen Harwood was a giant of a man whose influence in dog circles is still being written. The dog that Pete was working that afternoon was sold a few weeks later and became a 13 time American Field “All Age” Champion, 1997 inductee to the Field Trial Hall of Fame, 2X winner of the William F. Brown Award, Purina Dog of the Year, winner of the rigorous 4 hour (total) National Free For All Championship and one of the most exciting dogs of our time…his name was “Rebel Wrangler”.

Stephen Harwood passed away September 5^th, 1995.

I still see a bird dog through his eyes.

What a ride!

At our ranch outside Falfurrias , we hunt out of two modified VW buses (a "Magic Bus"according to The Who). In our soft 'sugar sand', we run a bit less air in the regular street tires, fill 'em with goop and can go virtually anywhere. Best of all, the ride is very 'smooth', like floating on air! Meanwhile, those bouncing along behind a running dog in an expensive, customized one-ton dually pickup with stainless dog crates and mile-high vantage points will be dragging out the 'BenGay" by the end of the day. While surfing the net this morning, I found this site built by John Howe of Kingsville with a picture tutorial on how to customize a VW bus for hunting! http://www.quail-hunter.com/Quailmobile_Project1.htm

Now, you just have to find a good mechanic to keep the darn thing running!
UPDATE! We DID find a good mechanic...probably the best, thanks to John Howe's recommendation...

Dale's Import Volkswagon Parts & Service

(361) 991-0100
7001 Road B, Corpus Christi, TX 78414

John Dearman

A few years ago, we commissioned John Dearman from Livingston, Texas to paint two of our Field Champion dogs, Beauregard De Lamont and Ce Cher Femme De Lamont. We were very pleased with the painting and it hangs prominently in our home.

John has built a very impressive career. He was awarded the Best of Show for watercolors at the Kansas City Wildlife Show, Best of Show at the Oklahoma Wildlife Show and First Place in the Southeast Waterfowl Exposition. John's art has also been featured in Ducks Unlimited, GCCA and other conservation organizations. His work has created the art featured on a Texas Quail Stamp Print, two Texas Turkey Stamp Prints, and two Texas Saltwater Stamp Prints.
http://www.collectorscovey.com/johndearmanbio.html

Why we're here

Hi Everyone....this Lamont Brittany blog site is about the line of bird dogs we have been associated with since 1977. We did not 'invent'...nor did we 'create' the Lamont line of dogs....in fact, we don't even know who did! We just know that our first stud dog was from a breeding that contained a couple of dogs named "Lamont" in the pedigree. We wanted to preserve the things we liked about AFC Buck De Lamont, his enthusasm, his looks, his bird sense and most of all his abilty to do it all...win field trials, bench shows, find worlds of quail, water retrieve Ducks & Geese, and to be a wonderful family pet. Buck's father was a RU National Champion and his maternal Grandfather was a National Champion ... a pretty good place to start huh? As we became more active in trialing and associating with top pros and amateurs, we discovered outstanding qualities in other dogs that we liked...NC Perry's Rustic Prince.....NC Bean's Blaze....Hall of Famer Rimarda's Trademark. The influence of Blaze and Trademark particularly, both from the HOF/NC Ban-Dee lineage, have been frequent 'go to' outcrosses that have strengthened the qualities we want to achieve. A look at recent pedigrees will confirm this influence. Other owners have achieved success with the progeny of Lamont dogs and have found them valid producers in their own breeding programs, with multiple Dual Champions, Field Champions and both AKC and American Field hour Championships. This blog, and our website http://www.lamontbrittany.com/ are designed to aid the serious breeder, hunter and trialer in making decisions about the future of the breed. Thanks for visiting.