Pointing Dog Journal
Overview and Identity
The Pointing Dog Journal is an American magazine devoted exclusively to hunting with pointing dogs, published by Village Press from Traverse City, Michigan. It covers setters, pointers, Brittanys, German shorthaired pointers, versatile breeds, and other pointing dogs used for upland bird hunting, with training instruction, hunting stories, veterinary care, breeding, field trials, and breed history written by experienced trainers and outdoor writers. It has worked alongside pointing dog hunters since 1993.
The magazine describes itself as the only full-color magazine in the world devoted to hunting with pointing dogs, published six times a year. That narrow focus is its strength. General sporting magazines divide attention among deer, waterfowl, fishing, and many kinds of dogs, while retriever and general gun dog titles serve different traditions. The Pointing Dog Journal speaks to hunters whose central pleasure is watching a dog range, find birds, and hold point, and whose year is organized around developing that partnership.
Origins and Village Press
The Pointing Dog Journal began in 1993, a starting point the magazine itself uses when describing its history with readers. It is published by Village Press of Traverse City, Michigan, a specialist publisher long associated with niche enthusiast magazines produced from northern Michigan. The journal is formally associated with Wildwood Press and Village Press as trademark holder in its online publishing, and its offices have been listed on Aero Park Drive in Traverse City, a base surrounded by Michigan grouse and woodcock country.
Traverse City is a fitting home. Michigan is a leading ruffed grouse and woodcock state, and the Great Lakes region supports strong traditions of setters and Brittanys in the grouse woods, versatile breeds around farms and water, and pointing dogs on western trips for pheasants, sharptails, and quail. A magazine edited in that landscape can test training advice against real coverts each autumn. Since 1993, that regional grounding has supported national coverage without losing the tactile sense of dog work that readers demand.
Editorial Focus on the Pointing Dog Partnership
Editorially, the journal emphasizes the time-honored tradition of hunting with dogs and the relationship between hunter and dog above all else. Articles deal with upland bird hunting, shotgunning, wildlife species, conservation topics, and dog training, care, and conditioning. Breed coverage profiles all types of pointing dogs, from English and Gordon setters and English pointers to Brittanys, German shorthaired and wirehaired pointers, wirehaired pointing griffons, spinoni, and the versatile breeds tested under systems that evaluate pointing, retrieving, tracking, and water work.
Hunting features profile places to go and species to pursue: ruffed grouse and woodcock in northern forests, pheasants in the Dakotas and Corn Belt, bobwhite quail in the South and southern plains, scaled and Gambel's quail and chukars in the West, prairie grouse and Huns on open grasslands. Photo essays illustrate dogs at work, while memoir-style stories preserve memories of particular dogs, covers, and companions. The balance of instruction and narrative reflects the truth that pointing dog culture is as much about inherited stories as about technique.
Training Instruction and Regular Columns
Training is the journal's instructional core. Its best-known recurring feature, Pointing Dog Pointers, offers training tips by Bob and Jody Iler of Green Valley Kennels in Dubuque, Iowa, who trained pointing dogs for more than thirty-five years and wrote many articles for the magazine. Their advice stresses patience and sequence: letting puppies become bold, confident, and birdy before demanding formal obedience, teaching basic commands such as come, whoa, and heel in proportion to a pup's age, and avoiding the common error of attempting too much too soon.
Other established departments listed for the magazine include a gun dog forum, a versatile hunting dog feature, a training series associated with noted trainer Rick Smith, a veterinary column known as The Vet's Office, regional features such as Western Wings and Eastern Encounters, a Gun Room column on shotguns, a Looking Back historical feature, product and video reviews, subscriber photographs, and a closing reflection feature. Together those departments structure each issue as a complete education: train the dog, care for the dog, choose the gun, understand the birds, remember the past, and go hunting.
Dogs, Breeding, Health, and Field Competition
Breeding and breed history receive serious treatment. Articles trace the origins and development of pointing breeds, explain field and show lines, discuss selecting puppies and proven parents, and examine how breeding choices affect range, style, nose, cooperation, and durability. For readers who may own only a handful of dogs in a lifetime, such guidance carries unusual weight, since a puppy choice shapes a decade of hunting. Portraits of notable sires, kennels, and individual great dogs form part of the sport's living memory.
Health and conditioning coverage, anchored by veterinary writing, addresses nutrition, conditioning for the season, injuries in the field, reproductive questions, aging dogs, and preventive care. Field trials and hunt tests appear as both sport and proving ground, with coverage of events such as grouse and woodcock championships and invitational competitions for top cover dog performers. Even readers who never compete benefit, because trial standards influence breeding and training ideas throughout the pointing dog world, and the journal explains those standards in accessible terms.
Upland Birds, Habitat, and Seasonal Forecasts
The journal keeps readers oriented to the birds themselves. Its annual upland gamebird hunting forecast, published online ahead of autumn seasons, assesses prospects for pheasants, bobwhites, ruffed grouse, woodcock, prairie grouse, desert quail, and chukars across leading states, drawing on habitat conditions, winter and nesting weather, and agency reports. In strong years, its editors have been able to report that key states were lining up for some of the best hunting in decades, while lean years are explained with the same habitat logic.
Conservation themes run through hunting coverage naturally, because pointing dog work depends on abundant wild birds and access to cover. Articles address grassland and forest management, farm conservation programs, public land opportunities, and the ethics of hunting over dogs, including fair chase and care for game. By connecting a thrilling point in a September grouse covert to the habitat conditions that produced the bird, the magazine educates its readers as habitat advocates without turning issues into policy journals detached from the field.
Art, Photography, and the Aesthetics of the Sport
Visual presentation is central to the journal's identity as a full-color magazine. Covers frequently feature original artwork celebrating autumn landscapes and dogs on point, including paintings by sporting artists, as well as photography of dogs, birds, guns, and coverts. The September and October issues, arriving at the emotional peak of the upland year, are treated as showcases, with cover art selected to whet appetites for fall and interior photo essays that dwell on style and class in pointing dogs, qualities connoisseurs judge as carefully as results.
That aesthetic commitment reflects the audience. Pointing dog enthusiasts are famously visual: they remember the arc of a setter's tail, the intensity of a point, and the light in a grouse covert long after numbers of birds are forgotten. A magazine that honors those images earns a place on coffee tables and in kennel offices beyond its reading life. Subscriber photographs extend the aesthetic to readers' own dogs, reinforcing the sense that the journal is a shared album of a national community organized by breed, region, and season.
Digital Presence and Reader Community
The journal's website publishes training articles, videos, season forecasts, and subscription services through the Village Press storefront, and its social presence shares covers, forecasts, and features between print issues. Online training columns allow new dog owners to find guidance at the moment a puppy arrives or a problem appears, while video of events such as national grouse and woodcock invitationals brings elite dog work to readers who cannot attend in person. Print subscriptions remain the core offer, with six issues a year delivered seasonally.
Community is sustained by the rhythm of the dog year the magazine follows: puppy selection and early development in spring, training and conditioning through summer, forecasts and anticipation in late summer, hunting through autumn, and reflection, breeding decisions, and reading in winter. Content is timed to that cycle, so instruction arrives when it can be used. Trainers, kennels, breed clubs, and outfitters connected to the magazine form a small commercial and social ecosystem in which the journal serves as bulletin board, teacher, and storyteller at once.
Audience and Significance
Readers are pointing dog owners and upland hunters: grouse and woodcock hunters of the North, pheasant hunters of the plains, quail hunters of the South and West, field trial participants, breeders, and owners of versatile dogs who test and hunt across land and water. They are served by top professionals and outdoor writers whose authority comes from kennels and coverts rather than offices. For a first-time setter owner and a veteran trial handler alike, the journal offers a common standard of what good dog work looks like.
The Pointing Dog Journal is significant because it preserved and professionalized a distinct sporting literature. Pointing dog knowledge once passed mainly through mentors, kennels, and regional clubs; since 1993 the journal has gathered it nationally, with consistent training philosophy, breed knowledge, veterinary guidance, and literary hunting writing in one place. In doing so, it has helped sustain the pointing dog tradition itself, teaching each new generation not only how to train a dog to point, but why the moment when a dog stands still before a hidden bird has captivated hunters for centuries.
