Jerry Havel has assembld a group of people and ventures that work together to make the life he lives possible. (Photo courtesy of Jeremy Moore)
The calendar says October has 31 days. Why then does it always feel like it begins and ends the same week? It was early November and I’d missed my window of opportunity, so this began as a call to a stranger named Jerry Havel that I’d heard on a podcast about shotguns, grouse camps, and Elhew pointers. I’d read Bob Wehle’s Snakefoot, The Making of a Champion, a must read on a dog man and his Elhew line of pointers. My copy was filled with scribbled on post-it notes, underlined sentences, highlighted paragraphs, and a list of unanswered questions.
I first introduced myself to Jerry, explained what I was trying to accomplish with this column, and invited him to bring dogs and join me at my camp. Not long into the conversation I knew it wasn’t going to happen. He’d wrapped up the season at his place in Minnesota and was leaving for a business trip to Italy. An easy way for him to say, “Sorry, the timing just won’t work,” but instead he asked, “When’s your deadline?” The conversation changed at that point, and this was my first clue as to who Jerry is, how he thinks, and more importantly, how he operates.
He hosted a woodcock banding clinic in the spring and invited me to join. “There’s going to be a bunch of bird nerds here,” he said, and laughed out loud at his own joke. He promised plenty of opportunity to see, work, and talk about his dogs, ending the call with, “If you come, you’ll probably get more than just a story about my pointers.” I went and he was right, on all accounts.
Pineridge Grouse Camp
His place is where blacktop changes to dry-dust roads. The closer I got, the smaller the towns grew. The last one had no stop light. Not far from there you’ll find a long driveway running west to east. Turn left at the Pineridge Grouse Camp mailbox, and pass through a perimeter of planted row-pines secluding a relatively large, softly rolling range of native grass, wildflowers, and sparse red pines. There wasn’t an ag field within 80 miles of this place, yet here amidst the heavily timbered country of northern Minnesota lay a training field fit for fine bird dogs. There’s a small village of cabins and outbuildings, and you will hear enough grouse drumming to know there is not a better place on the continent to raise a wild bird dog.
In camp hardly long enough to unpack the truck, I was summoned to the firepit. Jerry had two beers, opened them, and said, “Welcome to Pineridge. The first ones on me, after that you’re on your own. Fridge is behind the bar—make yourself at home.” Our conversation weaved its way through family, work, old dogs, and guns.
By the next morning, I made myself both at home, and a pot of coffee. Jerry is a big man, with an even bigger personality. It was clear to me from the start, but I didn’t truly understand why until he walked in that morning. King of his castle, wearing nothing but a bath robe and slippers, grasping two mugs that yearned be filled, we poured black coffee and picked up on subjects where we’d left off the night before.
I began to better understand the “why” to the way he lives. Jerry and his wife, Brenda, characterize what I call successfully “living.” High school sweethearts, Bemidji State business grads, they’ve traveled together and lived around the globe—and raised three kids who do the same. One lives in Italy and is her dad’s translator in meetings for another business they own, the Upland Gun Company. Their only grandson Milo, they both adore and spoil as grandparents should. At the time of this report, he’s a year old and Grandpa Jerry has his first side by side being custom built in Italy. All this, family and business “success” did not come without its share of challenges.
Facing Adversity
For a period of three years, between 2007-2010, Jerry wasn’t grouse hunting or training dogs. He told me that there was a while that he and Brenda had only one goal: To simply make it till 12:01 and try to beat the next day. He was battling cancer and underwent nine major surgeries that changed their perspective on everything going forward. Today, things are kept much simpler. He went on to share the three questions he asks when faced with adversity:
- Is anyone bleeding?
- Is anyone dying?
- Can we throw money at it to fix it?
He then instructed, “If the answers are no, no, yes, we’ll be good. Everything else is minor. One of the lessons from my cancer was that 99 percent of problems are small.”
Whether he knew it or not, in the short amount of time I spent with him, I got an education—an up close, personal lesson on understanding gratitude and appreciation for the simplest of things. Talks like that made it easy for me to forget the real reason I thought I was there for.
The Art of Breeding Bird Dogs
I refocused and realized that Jerry having pointers is just a matter of him having the right tools for the trade, another ingredient in his recipe. Bob Wehle spent some 65+ years building his Elhew line, and they have deservingly earned a spot in bird dog history. Since he passed, some have tried but not quite been able to replicate what he’d been able to do. Something’s been missing, and it was described to me once this way: When Rembrandt died, they couldn’t just give his paints to the next guy and expect to get a Rembrandt. It takes more than just paint to make art.
In Jerry’s dogs, the primary purpose for the “Elhew” isn’t marketing, status, or effect. It’s for function. He needs dogs that are intelligent, physically and mentally sound, can both find and handle wild birds, and are capable of being steadied at a relatively young age. It’s those traits that he gets from the old Elhew style dogs he’s kept now for generations and continues to refine, not as a source of profit by definition, but instead as a necessary expense. He’s crafting dogs for grouse and woodcock more effectively than he can find or buy them anywhere else and when he breeds on the rare occasion, most if not all of his pups are kept back to become a part of either his, or his guide’s strings.
Good, Better, Best – Dog Training
When it comes to working dogs, Jerry is a lot handier than I had given him credit for. Even better, he has the heart of a teacher to go with the hands and he was excited to see my setter work. I had just recently started “taking her chase away,” and I should have known better than to “test” my 17-month- old pup in a new location, in front of a crowd of strangers. I knew she wasn’t ready for the test they’d set up, but Jerry’s a salesman, and a good one at that. He’s also more convincing than I was reluctant. We ran her, and she proved true once again…a dog has a way of humbling their human.
After she blew through the first two pigeons, I couldn’t find a hole or rock big enough in that field to climb in or under. Before the third, Jerry stopped and coached me into a sure bet way to salvage the session. I check corded her into the final pigeon, he launched it, and she corrected herself on the break, ending with something to take away. As we walked back, this time he laughed at me and my sulking ways and said, “Just gotta slow down boss…we’ll work her through the problem. Good, better, best.”
A message he repeated to others throughout the weekend, and one that just makes sense. Start good, get better, end on the best. Since that visit, I’ve said it to myself regularly and have even caught myself muttering the words to my dogs at times.
If you’ve seen the movie, The Greatest Showman, you know the story of P.T. Barnum. Jerry Havel reminds me of him. He’s curated enough vintage items off late-night eBay buys to make up a grouse and woodcock museum, and in his own words has assembled a true “cast of characters” around him. Barnum and Havel are made of pure entrepreneurial resolve and second to none when it comes to telling a captivating story. They’ve made lives out of creating world class experiences and memories to match. For Jerry, this spirit applies and intertwines with all of his business ventures and personal interests. Pineridge is home to premier wing shooting in the fall, and the balance of the year they’ll host everything from a Blues Music festival with BBQ and Bourbon tasting to dog boarding, training, testing, trialing, gun fittings, and more. Jerry’s the mastermind conductor that orchestrates the synergy between his family and friends with his family of businesses.
He’s a businessman, an artist, a friend—and he’s inspiring. It’s the trips like that, the ones that don’t always go as I had them planned, where I always seem to learn the most.
