I grew up in a household where hunting was almost an every day activity. As far back as I can remember my dad belonged to the Naugatuck Fish and Game club. Dad used to go hunting pheasant, grouse, deer and turkey whenever the season was open. It was, I believe, a natural extension of my grandparents growing up in the great depression. My mom grew up on a dairy farm and my dad’s parents used to raise 200 chickens a year to feed the family. Slaughtering animals for food was just part of life. Extending this to game animals was both economics and recreation. It just made sense.
We got our first bird dog, a golden retriever named Dart, when I was about 10 years old. Back then, you had to be 12 years old to be able to go hunting. Man, those were two of the longest years of my life.
When I turned 12, “Santa” brought be a Harringting and Richardson Topper shotgun for Christmas. It was a single barrel, single shot gun in 20 gauge barrel.
Dart lived a long life, and was my constant hunting companion even into my college years. My dad had a series of Golden retrievers after Dart, but none of them were very good bird dogs.
After Dart passed, I didn’t really have a good hunting dog for decades. Right after Lee-Ann and I got married in 2000, we decided to get a dog. I did a lot of research trying to choose a breed that would work for us. After a lot of research we settled on the field bred English Springer Spaniel. The field bred dogs look almost nothing like the show dogs you see in the Westminster dog show.
My dad had a couple of friends that we used to hunt with quite frequently: Armand Piscitelli, Stanley Jacoboski, Don “Butch” Matthews, and Phil Mancini to name a few. Butch was always my favorite to hunt with because he had a beautiful Browning Citori over/under shotgun. A couple of times I ran out of ammo for my 20 gauge, and Butch would generously let me use his gun. That was a highlight of my childhood!! I ended up with a Citori of my own years later and still shoot it today!
