CONTENTS
Order Form for books and videos
Firth
Productions
film and video production in the Scottish Highlands
Specialising in Country Videos
Located in the Scottish Highlands, on the south side of the Dornoch Firth, this small independent video and film production company specialises in bringing the Scottish countrysports and the Scottish countryside to you on video.
Links to Books and Videos
| "Training the Short-Winged Hawk - An Elizabethan Perspective"
| The Pointing Instinct | Grouse Hawking | Bird Dog Basics | Game for Gundogs | Arkwright's
"The Pointer and His Predecessors" | Derry Argue's
"Pointers and Setters" | John Cox's "Observations
on Falconry and Pakistan" | Rare and Collectors' Books |
Book reviews |
NEW!! Training the Short-Winged Hawk
NEW!! Falconry or Hawking
Book reviews
All prices in £s (pounds) sterling and listed as
GBP (=Great Britain Pounds).
Photo (left): Advie Miedema ("Don") in
action in one of our videos
Go direct to Ordering Information
Our first production and still the most popular, The Pointing
Instinct, featuring Advie Gundogs, is an introduction to the fascinating
world of pointing dogs. Released in March 1996, it was followed by Grouse
Hawking. Bird Dog Basics
was next, produced in response to those who wanted to know how the dogs were trained in The
Pointing Instinct. And now Game for Gundog
Training which covers all aspects of using game for dog training,
including bob white quail. The videos are available in PAL and NTSC format on VHS video
cassette, except Game for Gundog Training which is only
available in PAL.
The Pointing Instinct
ISBN 0 906924 04 9
Price 18.95GBP plus 2GBP Air Mail world-wide.
This title shown as inflight entertainment by a major international airline.
Here is what the critics had to say ---
Graham Cox in Shooting Gazette, U.K.
"....the (pointers and) Llewellin setters which star in his 55 minute video The
Pointing Instinct are as pure as they come. That title underlines the fact that this is
not primarily intended as a "how to" instructional video....but....anyone
interested in training a gundog effectively should be fascinated by the whole subject of
scent and this video -- courtesy of pups not yet three months old and their breeder's
lightly worn expertise -- is a veritable masterclass in the subject.
"What we see, on the Ross-Shire moor which adjoins Derry Argue's farm, is a wholly
natural learning process in which pups gradually begin to make sense of the complex
messages which their noses are relaying to their, as yet, uneducated brains. Nothing is
rushed in this nicely paced and well-shot film so we can begin to appreciate just how much
is encoded in that genetic template with which they have been endowed by generation after
generation of single-minded breeding.
"We, meanwhile, are privileged with a ringside seat to watch just
how much they learn from the experiences to which they are exposed and, in the process, we
learn ourselves....We learn the way scent fans out in a cone shape so that it is perfectly
possible for one pup to have a confident point whilst another, approaching from the side,
is unable to manage even a hesitant reading of the scenario and blunders in...
"It is a heady mix and a method which really gets the puppies hunting, not least
because it is fun. The best "lessons" are those which are enjoyed....
David Henderson in The Pointing Dog Journal, U.S.A. --
"This is something different. I never write about videos because I like and
promote print. If my editor lets me get away with it, it is because he's seen a remarkable
presentation of dog training results. (A training manual video is scheduled for release
shortly).
"Golly, gee-whizz, dang! I never saw such control! From whelping to finished working
dogs, every frame was happy. No flushing whip, no electric collar, just a whistle and hand
signals. If you have seen a single sheepdog work at a distance from the handler, imagine
seeing 25 or so grown dogs, flying around, only to come in, circle the boss, and all
"drop" on simply holding up a hand, then come in individually, on name. They
can't even do that in Ringling Brothers! It's the most amazing exhibition of dog/handler
rapport I've ever seen".
Keith Erlandson in The Countryman's Weekly, U.K. --
"Derry Argue is his own man who does his own thing and has not competed in trials
for many years, concentrating instead on breeding and training his "Advie"
pointers and Llewellin setters....
"As someone who quite frequently has seen young bird dogs up to the age of 12 months
blundering quite happily into game and being familiar with the statement "He hasn't
found his nose yet", I was quite amazed to see pointer pups as young as nine weeks
steadily pointing birds by nose, then having a good chase when one of their mates
"steals" the point and flushes....
"My favourite character in the film is a very co-operative Brown Hare who gives
valuable steadiness lessons to more mature pupils and seems quite oblivious to dogs and
video camera...
"This is a most interesting film for any person interested in bird dog training but
it goes far beyond that point. I can thoroughly recommend it to anyone with an
interest in any of the other gundog breeds...."
Photo (left): See tiny pups working like trained workers.
Photo (right): What is dog work all about? How have the Brits been working
dogs for 375 years?
Photo (left): See forty
bird dogs in action.
Photo (right): See pups and learn how they learn!
Photo (left): How do you get pups to point?
Grouse Hawking
ISBN 0 906924 05 7
Price 18.95GBP plus 2GBP Air Mail world-wide
This title shown as inflight entertainment by a major international
airline.
A 50 minute video of hunting the red grouse with gyr-peregrine hybrids and English
setters in Perthshire, Scotland.
Each year Frenchman Henri Desmonts comes to Scotland to hunt the wildest game bird in the
world -- the Red Grouse -- with his falcons. For centuries, man has sought to replicate
that most exciting of spectacles -- the downward stoop of the falcon onto it's prey.
In 1623, Louis XIII, the king of France, sent one of his barons to show the English
king, James I, the French style of falconry. He brought with him setting dogs and falcons.
This is probably the first time setters were seen used in this way on British soil.
Previously, the spectacle was a sight reserved only for the privileged few. Now you can
watch game hawking, the waiting on flight with falcons using pointing dogs, in the privacy
and comfort of your own home!
Photo (left): Grouse Hawking takes you through every
stage of falconry from the earliest raising of a falcon.
Photo
(left): Interested in learning to make your own bells?
Photo (left): What's the role of dogs in Grouse Hawking?
Photo(left):
Grouse hawker Henri Desmont, your host for the video, is a true authority on the sport.
Bird Dog Basics
ISBN 0 906924 06 5 
Sorry!
Sold out and I do not intend to get more duplicated.
Price 18.95GBP plus 2GBP Air Mail world-wide.
Rights to this title have recently been acquired by a major European cable and satellite TV company for showing throughout the Continent.
Order Now
This 55 minute
video explains the principles behind Derry Argue's methods and shows you how to "get
up and going" with pointing dogs.
Controlling as many as 40 bird dogs at a time is easy if you know how! See a dog taught to point in ten minutes! Five dogs handled simultaneously! And all done with patience and a piece of string! The key to training anything is to trigger the correct responses. The answer to a true partnership with your hunting companion is trust and mutual respect. This video shows you how those things you saw in The Pointing Instinct were possible and tells you how to do it for yourself with your own dog -- without using harsh methods or expensive gadgets. The way it has been done in Britain for over 400 years!
Photo (left): Learn how to dizzy pigeons... What's that? You will
learn more in Bird Dog Basics.
Photo (right): How to train a dog to point ... in twenty
minutes?
Photo (left): Ducks and sheepdogs? What's that got to do with pointing
dogs? It is all in the video.
Photo (right): Game releasers? Are they useful and how do you use them?
Photo (left): Bob white quail. The best thing that ever happened for the bird dog trainer.
Photo (right): Use of the call back system. What's that?
Game for Gundog Training
ISBN 0 906924 07 3
Price 18.95GBP plus 2GBP postage world-wide.
This video explains how to rear and use game for gundog training and is available
in VHS PAL (UK) format only for viewers in the United Kingdom, Europe, New
Zealand, Australia, and all countries using the PAL format. The dogs in the
above videos were trained on American bob white quail so the programme concentrates on the
management, rearing, and training of these birds for this purpose.
Egg production, incubation, rearing, and finally training the birds so that they return to
the call back pen. Once you have achieved that, the trick is to put them out where your
dog can work them before they fly off home! The video tells you how to do it. You can
quickly get your dog to point as well as the pup does in this video. All the trade secrets
in one title.
Photo (left): Rearing game birds for dog training can be done by anyone
with a back garden.
Photo (left): Bob white
quail are ideal for dog training.
Photo
(left): Raising birds involves providing more than just feed and water.
A New Book!! Published and transcribed by Derry Argue
Turbervile's "Book of Falconry or Hawking":
First published in 1611, this book is out now with copies shipped soon after Christmas! This is another classic written during the same era as Bert's and there are some great hints in it. The original type-setting and style were even harder to translate than Bert's -- all 375 pages! This is strictly a limited edition so it is sure to become another collectable. Click on the image of a page from Turbervile (right) and see how you get on with your own transcription!
This is a short print run. Coch-y-bonddhu-books (http://www.anglebooks.com/).
Price 29.95GBP, plus 6.00GBP post and packing within the UK and Europe, and 12.00GBP Air Mail elsewhere.
NEW!!
"Training the Short-Winged Hawk - An Elizabethan Perspective"
Edmund Bert's "An Approved Treatise of Hawks
and Hawking", published in 1616, is generally accepted to be the best book
on training the passage European Goshawk (accipiter gentilis) that has even been
written. The problem was that nobody, except the scholars, could read it!
Printed in the type style of the era, it was almost impossible for the average
falconer to understand. That has been remedied by Derry Argue's transcription
into modern style.
The language remains much as it was, with occasional
explanations, so retaining the charm of the original text. Bert was an educated
and highly intelligent man who was also a professional falconer. He excelled in problem solving and sets out in his own inimitable style
to explain, once the hawk is trained and hunting, how to cure a number of faults, such as
carrying the kill, hood shyness,
extreme nervousness, etc. This book is going to be a "must have" for
anyone interested in falconry and essential reading for short wingers.
But that's not all. Included in this volume is a transcription of "The
Perfect Booke for Keeping Sparrowhawkes or Goshawkes" which was written
around 1575 and, if dated, is excellent on the training and management of
sparrowhawks!
This is a short print run. Copies available from Coch-y-bonddhu-books (http://www.anglebooks.com/).
Price 24.95GBP, plus 4GBP post and packing within the UK and Europe, and 6.00GBP Air Mail elsewhere.
"Pointers and Setters" - the book
by Derry Argue, 2nd Edition (published 1999)
Price 19.95GBP from your local
bookstore,
Now Officially Out of Print. Try Amazon or Google!
But if you contact Cochi-Bonddu books
(http://www.anglebooks.com) you may still be able to get your
copy for 19.95GBP plus postage as he may have a few
left. (Make sure you have a clean copy in your
library. First Editions often appreciate in value). But please check by emailing
your order to Paul@anglebooks.com. Lots and lots
of other interesting sporting books there too! SOLD
OUT!
Acclaimed as the most up to date authority on British native working pointers and setters
and written by a practical hunter and trainer with over forty years experience, here's a
chance to acquire an investment.
Chapters on The Pursuit of Style, Origins of the Bird Dogs, The Llewellin Setter,
Choices, How Dogs Learn, Training, Training in the Field, Further Training, Home Life,
Hunting, breeding -- Field Trials -- The Kennel Club, etc., and Learning More.
Price £19.95 from your local bookstore or only 9.95GBP Cochi-Bonddu Books at the above
address.
This book is now officially out-of-print. Cochi-Bonddu
Books has SOLD OUT!
"The Pointer and His
Predecessors"
by William Arkwright
Price 29.95GBP plus 5GBP UK postage UK, Europe, and Air Mail elsewhere.
This is the third time
we have reprinted this valuable book on the pointer. Every pointer owner ought to have a
copy in his library and every gundog enthusiast ought to read it.
First published in 1903 in a large "coffee table" format, his book was followed
by a more handy Second Edition in 1906 which was entitled "The Popular
Edition". It is this second edition which I published as re-prints in
1977 and 1989. The current re-print is of the same format containing all twenty-two
illustrations as found in this 1906 edition.
"The Pointer and His Predecessors" contains chapters
on Early History, Later History, Shows and Working Trials, Characteristics of the
Pointer, Breeding and Selection, Alien Crosses, Shooting over Dogs, Breaking, Kennel
Management, and a List of Books.
This is without doubt the most famous and authoritative book ever published on the
pointer. This book consolidates the information on the pointer up the peak of it's
development, and decline, around the turn of the century.
As he describes in the first chapters, the pointer was imported into this country around
1730. It was a slow ponderous animal which was to be transformed during the next hundred
years into a fast, easily trained game-finding machine. But fashions were changing; so was
farming and the countryside. The vogue was for bigger and bigger bags which could only be
got by driving, the "battu", to teams of Guns in blinds or butts. The pointer's
heyday was over.
Arkwright was a pointer fanatic. He spent nine years on research, and learnt another
European language so he could complete his book. But this is a book which will be of
interest to anyone who enjoys dogs or sport. Arkwright joined The Kennel Club in 1876 soon
after its formation and two years later was elected to the Committee. He was responsible
for starting field trials for spaniels and the first trial of the Sporting Spaniel Club
was held on his Sutton Scarsdale estate. In 1901 he was Chairman of the International
Gundog League which had the aim (as it has today) of furthering the interests of working
gundogs. But soon after the publication of the 2nd Edition of this book there came a
significant event. He resigned from judging dog shows because he felt that the type found
on the bench had nothing to do with the breed he knew as a worker in the field. As Argus
Olive commented in Country Life at the time, "Formation in the Pointer and Setter
means a great deal; but instinct means more".
What the reviewers of the 1977 re-print had to say:
The Field -- Wilson Stephens.
"Though historical research was one of its mainsprings, it has an evergreen
significance. Nobody is fully equipped to train pointing dogs until he has based his
thinking on the fundamentals which Arkwright first researched, then developed, and finally
reduced to practical conclusions".
The Shooting Times -- Peter Moxon.
"This book contains a mass of detail and information which is of interest to the
owner, trainer, or breeder of any type of gundog. The section on "breaking" (as
training tended to be called in those days) contains many pearls of wisdom culled from
writers as far back as 1628 which are as applicable today as they ever were. I commend
Arkwright's book to my readers to enjoy and profit from for themselves, no matter what
type of gundog they use".
Sporting Gun -- James Douglas.
"It is a text book of great importance to anyone interested in all aspects of our
shooting culture".
Kennel Gazette -- J S Williams
"William Arkwright wrote in a very forthright manner, confident in the wealth of
knowledge which he had of the breed and from a background of great experience. It is a
fascinating book written in direct and readable language".
Gamekeeper and Countryside -- Lyle D Bobzin.
"Rarely does any author succeed in a volume timeless in its application. This
book is highly recommended for all who are interested in the pointer".
I have a few copies of "Observations on Falconry and Pakistan" by
John Cox published in 1985.
Price 25GBP plus 4GBP postage UK and Europe, and Air Mail elsewhere.
SOLD OUT
This hard cover book has 105 pages and 96 black-and-white photographs and drawings, privately published in Pakistan in 1985.
This is an account of the author's travels in Pakistan in search of the fast disappearing professional hawk trappers and falconers.
I found this little book quite fascinating. I started reading at midnight after a 200 mile round trip to see grouse hawking in Caithness and read the last chapter first thing the following morning only because my eyes gave out! Couldn't put it down!
Use of the jangoali to throw a hawk? Flying goshawks without a glove? Hawks trained and coming "four or five hundred yards" after a week? A shikra flown at woodpigeon in the UK? Trapping peregrines, sakers, and goshawks?
Photos from the book. Goshawk held on the bare
hand wearing a jangoali.
Shikra
held for throwing.
Pencil sketch by Bob Stanley.
Rare and Collector's Books
Bird Dogs and Falconry
The following books are in my own library and I only have a rough idea of what
they are worth -- but I am open to offers. Please do not contact me and ask how
much I will take. If you want to buy, it is up to you to make an offer of what
that book is worth to you. Further details by Email.
"The Pointer and His Predecessors" by William Arkwright -
1903 First Edition in excellent condition. Offers over 500GBP. Unnumbered.
"The Pointer and His Predecessors" by William Arkwright -
1906 Popular Edition - This is the Second Edition from which all my reprints have been
taken. Overall in slightly scruffy condition. A few torn pages, water marks on hard cover.
Offers over 300GBP.
"The Pointer and His Predecessors" by William Arkwright
- 1989 re-print by Derry Argue. I have a few copies in new condition. Offers around 50GBP
each.
"Pointers and Setters" by W Marr, 1979 re-print of the
English edition published by Derry Argue in the late 1960's. I have a few copies in new
condition. SOLD OUT
"The Gordon Setters: History and Character" by G St G M
Gompertz.
Two copies.
Another with scruffy dust jacket, otherwise
excellent.
Another with water marks on dust jacket,
cover and perhaps the edges of a dozen pages, otherwise good.
Please do not contact me and ask how
much I will take. If you want to buy one of these books, it is up to you to make an offer of what
that book is worth to you.
Ordering information:
Tapes are usually dispatched within 48 hours of receipt of order. All are on VHS
and available in PAL (mostly European, Australia, New Zealand, etc) and NTSC
(USA, Japan, etc) unless otherwise stated.
To access a currency conversion calculator on-line, go to http://www.xe.net/ucc/
"Training the Short-Winged Hawk" and "Hawking or Falconry" are now available on Ebay. Go to Ebay and do a search on the title.
Mail Order: You can still purchase by mail using the following form and sending it with a Sterling cheque or a UK postal order direct to Firth Productions.
To do so, please print out this form,
fill in the details clearly and completely, and mail to Firth Productions at the address below:
PLEASE WRITE CLEARLY!
Don't forget to check to see that you have filled in ALL details and
that they are legible!
To: Firth Productions, Miller's Place, Fendom, Tain, Easter Ross IV19 1PE,
Scotland, U.K.
Payment accepted by Bankers' Draft in Sterling, Personal cheques drawn against UK banks,
or UK postal orders, but NOT credit cards.
Please send my tapes to (please print using capital letters):
Name___________________________________________________________
Address:_________________________________________________________
House number/name________________
Street____________________________________________________________
Town___________________________County/State_______________________
Post Code/Zip__________Country_____________________________________
Phone No:___________________________Email:_________________________
Please send me_____ copies of Hawking or Falconry at
29.95GBP
each plus 5GBP post and packing UK and Europe, or 7GBP elsewhere by Air
Mail.
Please send me_____ copies of Training the Short Winged Hawk
at 24.95GBP
each plus 3GBP post and packing UK and Europe, or 5GBP elsewhere by Air
Mail.
Please send me_____ copies of your reprint of William Arkwright's "The
Pointer and His Predecessors" at 29.95GBP each plus 3GBP post and packing UK
and Europe, and 6.50GBP elsewhere by Air Mail.
Please send me_____ copies of John Cox's "Observations on Falconry and
Pakistan" at 15.00GBP each plus 2GBP post and packing UK and Eurpean, and
5GBP elsewhere by Air Mail.
Please send me_____ copies of The Pointing Instinct at 18.95GBP
each plus 2GBP post and packing per tape (includes Air Mail).
Please send me_____copies of Grouse Hawking at 18.95GBP each plus 2GBP
post and packing per tape (includes Air Mail).
Please send me_____copies of Bird Dog Basics at 18.95GBP plus 2GBP post
and packing per tape (includes Air Mail).
Please send me_____copies of Game for Gundog Training at 18.95GBP plus
2GBP post and packing per tape (includes Air Mail). This tape is
not available in NTSC (US) format.
Unless otherwise requested, tapes will be sent in the following formats: PAL for EU, AUS,
NZ, UK, etc. - or NTSC for Japan, USA, Canada, etc. No tapes are in SECAM.
Please check your form carefully.
Have you filled in all the details? Are they easy to read?
Failure to do this carefully may cause delays and frustration!
Mail the complete order form with payment where appropriate to:
Firth Productions
Miller's Place, Fendom
Tain, Easter Ross IV19 1PE
Scotland UK
Click here to Email
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