Desert Dogs Bird Hunters Flock South In Winter

Dan Hoke didn’t slack off the job the last few weeks because of wintry weather.

Hoke and Mike Hemphill, both professional dog trainers, left Washington’s snow and bitter cold to work in sunny Arizona.

For more than a month, they’ve been dogging the desert in what’s become an annual winter field trip.

“There’s no way I could do this kind of work in the winter at home,” said Hoke. He was following three eager German short-haired pointers through the prickly pears and parched landscape east of Tucson. “Instead of plowing snow and breaking ice, I’m getting these dogs on wild birds every day.”

The trainers make the expedition to chase the Gambel’s and scaled quail scattered among 14.2 million acres of public land managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

Each man packed 20 dogs from field trial and hunting clients who paid around $500 apiece to give their dogs a month of “the real thing.”

“We don’t need planted birds here,” Hoke said.

Although dog training is the emphasis, the trainers shoot a few quail a day. The breasts are filleted and stored in a cooler until there’s enough for one of Hoke’s nearly legendary dinners of wok-fried quail nuggets.

Professionally, Hoke and Hemphill are competitors in the Spokane-area market. Hoke’s kennel is near Medical Lake while Hemphill’s is in the Spokane Valley. Yet for a month each winter, they share the chores of camping miles from the nearest water spigot.

“We got together after an incident I had a few years ago,” Hemphill said.

The trainer was camping alone near the Mexico border that year. One night, he could see the headlights of a vehicle bouncing over several dusty miles of dirt road toward his campfire. Four men got out of the car and said they’d come to rob the camp.

“Their mistake was coming to a gunfight armed with knives,” he said, pointing to the pistol he wears under his coat at night.

“They left, but I dragged my sleeping bag out into the desert and slept away from camp that night.”

The work at the nomad dog training center begins before dawn and ends long after sundown. The camping and hunting part is complicated by four chain-gangs of shorthairs, wirehairs and Brittanys, plus four horses. Every drop of water must be hauled. The inventory at any one time might include a ton of alfalfa pellets and dog food. Yet one can imagine a bit of cowboy romance in the setting.

“Here we are,” Hemphill said, tending steaks over glowing mesquite coals. “We got everything we need: our horses, our dogs, our guns and a campfire.”

Hoke rolled his eyes. “I could use a shower,” he said.

“I miss my wife,” said Hemphill.

One of the dogs started whining at a sky filled to capacity with stars.

The bottle of liquor by Hoke’s side didn’t get opened that night. Even in the desert, the nighttime temperature would dip below 20 degrees.

The men were beat.

Because they move frequently, pulling horse trailers and packing their pickups with dog kennels, Hoke and Hemphill don’t enjoy luxury camping accommodations.

Hemphill sleeps in a horse trailer. Hoke sleeps in the front of his pickup.

The only distraction from the daily grind of tending dogs and trekking across the desert, is the periodic night in a motel and occasional visit from friends or clients.

With relish, the trainers take turns telling about Jeff Rossey of Medical Lake and his younger brother, Mike, from Cheney.

The brothers were riding through vast acreages of cactus during a visit when Jeff spontaneously plucked one of the smooth, sweet-looking yellow fruits off the end of an otherwise prickly cholla cactus.

“Have you ever tasted one of these?” Jeff said taking a bite. “Mmm, they’re really good,” he said, handing a piece to his brother, Mike.

More than 30 years of being around his shameless sibling apparently hasn’t taught Mike a thing, Hoke said.

“He just chomped right into that thing,” Hemphill said.

Turns out the cholla fruit, which has a smooth waxy skin on the outside, is laced INSIDE with pin-sharp spines.

Because misery loves company, Jeff had managed to hide the grimace on his face when he took the initial bite to avoid tipping off his brother.

The vivid scene in Hoke’s mind involves plenty of muffled cussing as the brothers sat in front of the pickup’s rearview mirrors, one plucking the roof of his mouth with tweezers, the other trying to rip the spines out of his tongue with duct tape.

The thorny open spaces of the desert are tough on customers, but they work to the advantage of the dog trainers.

“The dogs learn to stay out of the cactus real quick,” Hoke said. “But it tends to slow them down just a little.”

Big-running dogs can be subdued simply by vastness - and the occasional fruitless pursuit of a jack rabbit.

“Sometimes I just get on the horse and follow,” Hemphill said. “After a few days, they’re tired enough to start listening.”

Finding quail rarely is a problem. Hunting them, however, can be frustrating.

The Gambel’s quail, and especially their cousins, the scaled quail, are more likely to run than fly.

Commonly, one might see 40, maybe 50, sometimes 60 quail sprinting up a sandy wash and into the stickered brush.

“You get a few points out of a big bunch like that,” Hoke said. “A little dog work, that’s it.”

Even huge flocks of quail can vaporize in the desert like a cup of water spilled in the hot sand.

Those are minor frustrations, compared to the day Hoke’s two horses sunk nearly to their withers in the gooey muck of a desert water hole.

“Pulled them out with a four-wheel-drive,” he said.

A dog trainer in the desert must be able to don various roles as automatically as his shell vest. Veterinarian, mechanic, cook, cowboy, entertainer and general repairman.

But sometime survival comes down to grunt work and instinct.

Hoke and Hemphill have buried their rigs to the frame in desert roads and fended off javelina attacks on some of their clients’ prized dogs.

The closest Hemphill’s come to death was at the hands of two troublesome wirehairs he’s dubbed the Bush Hog Brothers.

Recognizing his vulnerability as he swung his leg over a barbed-wire fence one day, the two dogs virtually pummeled Hemphill with affection.

“I had my shotgun in one hand and the top wire of the fence in the other and all I remember is barking and my skin ripping on the barbs,” he said.

After getting on the other side of the fence, Hemphill, battered and bleeding, dropped his pants to his ankles to assess the damage. He bent forward just in time to look back between his legs and see that the Bush Hog Brothers had squeezed under the fence and were coming at him full speed.

He went down heels over head, engulfed by fur and a cloud of desert dust.

“The worst part is that they never were and never will be good bird dogs,” Hemphill said.

After three weeks in the desert, the dogs were improving, but the toil was taking a toll on the trainers.

Hoke said he has a recurring dream of a 4-foot-tall quail he finds lying on the ground among the cacti. The dream usually ends as one of the quail’s eyes opens.

“I’m worried that one of these nights this thing’s going to open both eyes and get off the ground before I have a chance to wake up,” he said.

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