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how many of you guys have heard of or used bird dogs for running deer? my uncle is just so tickled with his buddy's deer running english pointers that he is even getting a pair of pointer pups out of his buddy's dogs. i've hunted with these dogs once, and they get the job done alright. quicker than a beagle but not nearly as tough as a coonhound. and 2 of the pointers got distracted from the deer and jumped a bird! the bird dogs cant take thick brush like a hound can because of thier fine fur. and thier paws arent webbed like a hound so they arent "all terrain" dogs either. idk, the pointers have a unique style of chasing deer, but i think that a dog should be used for the purpose that it was specifically bred for if it isnt a pet.
any opinions would be appreciated

if they're running like they should you should only hear them open when they have eyes on the deer. if so he'd be just as well serve w/ a good cur dog. i disagree about only hunting dogs on what they "were bred for." if you can get them to wind and point bedded deer you'd have something there but you can't teach that to deer dogs. or what about running beagles on deer, of all the hounds i prefer them the most because their smaller size & slower speed doesn't push the deer as hard so you get walking shots instead of running shots. but those are my likings, everyone has their own likings and it would be a moral abomination to dictate to other people what they can run & what they can run it on.

Wow up here if you see dogs running deer they usually end up shot before the deer and any one that owns a dog that runs deer would that you for getting rid of it.

The difference is in maine you are looking for the one deer in a 5 mile section.

In Virginia you are looking for one of the 500 deer in a five mile section.

Therefore one would think that we would be more prone to useing them, would'nt they? I've hunted in NJ and NC and just didnt see the point in running deer with dogs when there were so many of them in such small areas not to mention that I have owned dogs larger than most of the deer. I guess it's just the way I was brought up.

yeah, they only bark when a deer is right infront of them. which i do like because you know they arent cold trailing or back tracking. and how the guy got the dogs was from a bird hunter that was fed up with them running deer but didnt want to shoot the dogs.

i'm not trying to dictate what kind of dogs people use. the reason why i put this post up to get a better idea of other peoples opinions so i can make a better opinion and view the situation from both sides. the deer pointers arent that bad in general, but the way this particular pack acts is what turns me off to them. the ones that i hunted w/ arent very bright or friendly at all. and one even growled at me when i was trying to drag a deer out. this isnt the breed's problem though, its the way they were trained and raised.

there are many reasons for running dogs on deer.
in most states that allow it the areas they permit it are relatively flat w/ dense undergrowth, for example in NC we have coastal swamp areas as large as 3,000 ac that are filled mostly w/ carolina bay trees & blackthorn. these plants form a canopy at 6-12ft that is so dense that a sunny summer day looks like a clear night w/a 1/4 moon. the 1-4" trunk/stems are 4-10" apart. inside these areas are patches of thick low growth the deer can feed & bed in. obviously you can't spot & stalk or still hunt through such an area and if you put up a tree stand on the edge you still can't see deer moving under the canopy. (the density of the cover is the reason coastal deer are small skinny & have little racks.) but dogs can push them out.
even w/ the large areas of low thick growth (which can be 6ft high & take an hour to chop 100yds through) it can be nearly impossible to see the deer, even from a tree stand. again the dogs get them moving so you can see them.
if you don't have 6 or 10 buddies available, you can still drive a patch of heavy cover w/a couple of dogs.
radio collar studies have shown as much as 30% of the deer population can be 100% nocturnal even in the rut. and man drives are unlikely to move these deer from there hideouts.
elderly hunters can hunt from a comfy chair on the dog box.
you only lose about 1 in 1000 poorly hit deer.
it's pretty much impossible to hunt deer w/only a knife unless you run dogs.
lastly & most importantly, it's just damn fun even if you don't kill anything.

yeah, i'd rather hunt deer w/ dogs than from a tree stand anyday! it's so much fun. if the deer gets away from you, your buddy a few yards away will probably get a shot at him and so on and so on and it doesnt matter who gets a deer or even if a deer is taken at all.

I've been around both bird dogs and deer dogs my whole life. I have never personally had a bird dog turned on to deer, but i do currently have the best deer dog i have ever seen or heard about (30lb rat terrior) and hunt him occasionally on birds. Now that im into hounds i have hunted him on coon and bobcat and he lead the chase on more than one occasion
One of the best deer dogs i ever hunted with was a english pointer. The dogs name was chappy and he was trained on both. He would actually run a buck back to you on a regular basis. The thing about english pointers is that they are alot like german shorthairs, they are so high strung they pretty much are out of control till 4 or 5 years old
If i have room in my kennel before my deer dogs goes down hill i would like to use him to train a english dog