ABOUT US
As a young boy growing up in Southern Wisconsin, my father took me away from our suburban surroundings regularly to hunt and fish near his childhood home in Central Wisconsin. We often fished for trout or set up a deer hunting stand in a woodlot passed down to him from his father. He taught me to enjoy many outdoor activities but he also taught me about the value and the gift of nature. He taught me to become a student of the land and take care of it. First and foremost it’s this conservation ethic that we attempt to carry on today.
Inspired by my father's stories of pheasant hunting on the farm where he grew up, I begged him for a bird dog puppy and by the time I was old enough to hunt, I had her. She was a small, dark colored German Shorthaired Pointer female that we called Britta. We didn’t know much about training then but we knew where to find birds and eventually she figured it out. She was a great pheasant hunting dog and got me hooked on pointing dogs.
Years later I moved to Northern Wisconsin upon graduating from College and took a job as a Conservationist. Not long after that I was lucky enough to marry the best person I know, my life partner and best friend, Katie. She always considers the needs of the dogs and is an intuitive animal caretaker. None of this could happen without her nurturing and hard work. Our home eventually became ten acres in the Upper St. Croix River Valley, surrounded by many square miles of public land and an abundance of wild birds. We are fortunate enough to live in the middle of some of the finest Ruffed Grouse and Woodcock covers in the Midwest and local prairie remnants provide numbers of Sharptailed Grouse for summer training.
Just to the north of our ten acres flows a stream fast and cold that we’ve nicknamed the Alder Fork. It’s a very short run that drains an enormous wooded swamp into one of the most beautiful rivers on earth, the St. Croix River. As a lifelong Conservationist I’ve delved deeply into the writings of Aldo Leopold. A chapter in his book, “A Sand County Almanac,” entitled “The Alder Fork,” speaks of a similar fast and cold stream somewhere in Northern Wisconsin where Leopold, after much sweating and scouting, was lucky enough to put a few native Brook Trout in his creel. Our Alder Fork has a braided channel and doesn’t support the same kind of cold water fishery, instead it’s surrounding habitats provide excellent upland bird cover. Even as it’s a different type of Alder Fork, the words of Leopold and the pursuit of his chosen quarry, resound for us and shape our ethic here at Alder Fork English Setters:
“I shall now confess to you that none of those three trout had to be beheaded, or folded double, to fit their casket. What was big was not the trout, but the chance. What was full was not my creel, but my memory. Like the white throats, I had forgotten it would ever again be aught but morning on the Fork.”
After 30 years of Bird Hunting, Conservation and Field Trial competition, we strive to continue to be a part of preserving wild birds and their habitats and developing world class English Setters.
