My pup was 16 weeks old, legs too long and feet too big for the rest of her. Sometimes she missed the front step and went out flat on her chin. She’d been a part of the family for six weeks and our upland bird season was about to close. Maybe I was pushing too hard, but I didn’t want the season to end without taking her on a hunt.

We called her Liesl, which on a good day sounds like lethal and on other days rhymes with weasel. She’s a pudelpointer, bred for intelligence, love of water, retrieving instinct, and willingness to please. Her lineage can be traced back 135 years to 7 German hunting pudels and 20 English pointers.

Six years ago, my friend Steve Waller showed me how skilled the breed was at finding deer and elk antlers. Later, we hunted pheasants. Waller introduced me to breeder Rod Rist, and this year we got our first pudelpointer from Rist. Prey drive, both Rist and Waller told me, is the most important quality at this stage.

When the dog was 11 weeks, I introduced her to a chukar wing tied to a fishing line. She gave chase and when she learned she couldn’t catch it, she began to point, her right leg cocked and tail erect.

When she was 12 weeks, I hid a pheasant wing. When she found it, she tried to run away with it. I tugged on the rope leash and brought her back to praise her. Soon, I began to carry a BB gun along on 10-minute training “hunts.”

At 14 weeks, she pointed the pheasant wing and stood still for a record 12 seconds, every muscle atremble. At 15 weeks, she ran off the leash into a stand of juniper trees. She sniffed packrat nests and field mouse holes. She ran ahead and then halted to check on me. She quartered into the wind and stopped when she’d picked up the scent of something far off. I went around a fallen juniper and found her pointing tweety birds in the branches. Prey drive—she’s got it.

The question with any pup is when to take it on the first hunt. I wondered if I was doing the right thing, but off we went.

My first dog was a springer spaniel given to me when the dog was 2 years old. Mike was his name but I sometimes called him Mike the Dog, to emphasize to schoolmates I personally had a bird dog of my own. His puppy years were spent in a large city, with little space for a dog of his pedigree to run. I was a country boy living in a perfect place for a dog of this caliber.

He soon showed such a remarkable talent to hunt that I amused myself trying to train him. Often I would play “hide and seek” with him in the big, open woods. With such willingness and energy, how he enjoyed the lessons seeking me out!

I had no dog-training experience, it just happened, and there blossomed out of it a wonderfully close working relationship. We were beginners, both experimenting with the unfamiliar and both so eager to discover bird hunting. With my lack of hunting knowledge, Mike used his biological instincts and worked hard to seek out gamebirds. We hunted the crop fields, fencerows, and brier tangles adjacent to the abandoned spur-line railroad tracks.

One day, walking an untidy shucked cornfield, Mike worked a few yards ahead of me, gleaning every likely holding spot a pheasant could hide. As we arrived at the end of the field, there was an explosion of catapulting pheasants flushing in all directions. I realized then that having a good bird dog contributed a great deal to my hunting enjoyment.

Before the standardization of American whiskey distilling techniques and barrel maturation, whiskey often tasted unruly. People flavored their drinks with cinnamon, fruits, and even tobacco plugs. Then, bartenders started mixing booze with sugar, herbs, and splashes of soda water, making foul whiskey more potable, or at least tolerable.

In 1862, the venerable Jerry Thomas published the book How to Mix Drinks and gave bartenders the ultimate guide for making cocktails. Thomas loved a stiff punch. Take a look at his Regent’s Punch: 1½ pint each strong hot green tea, lemon juice, and capillaire (an herb); 1 pint each rum, brandy, arrack, and Curaçao; and 1 bottle of Champagne, with pineapple. This recipe has more alcohol than the average American consumes in a year! Suffice it to say, Americans loved to drink back then.

As for hunters, well, they were mostly known for bringing a barrel of whiskey to the hunt. Today, you’ll likely bring a flask or a good bottle of something delicious. But breaking out the cocktail shaker every now and then does still happen.

In fact, here’s a cocktail recipe called the Hunter Cocktail: 2 ounces rye whiskey, ½ ounce cherry brandy, and a Maraschino cherry. You pour the rye and brandy into a chilled glass filled with ice, stir, and garnish with the cherry.