About Superior Pointers

Superior Pointers is a small kennel owned and operated by Mark and Kathy Wendling in northern Bayfield County, Wisconsin, five miles from Lake Superior. Our acreage is prime ruffed grouse habitat, and adjoins over 89,000 contiguous acres of actively managed Bayfield County Forest. This provides us the opportunity to work, and test, all our dogs regularly on wild birds.

We are wild bird hunters, who hunt every dog in the kennel. We don't keep "stud dogs" or "brood bitches" primarily, or exclusively, for breeding. We spend the month of September on the western prairies hunting sharptails, prairie chickens, and huns, while training and evaluating young dogs that we are considering adding to the kennel. Starting in October, we concentrate on locally abundant ruffed grouse.

Our Grouse Dogs

While our Elhew Pointers are equally proficient on a variety of upland birds, we are primarily grouse hunters. The pure Elhew Pointers that we keep are all accomplished grouse dogs, and the carefully planned breedings that we make are all designed to produce superior grouse dogs. In our experience, ruffed grouse are the single most difficult upland bird for a pointing dog to handle properly. Ruffed grouse inhabit difficult terrain, don't produce a lot of scent, and won't tolerate crowding by a dog with a mediocre "nose" or weak pointing instinct. Bird dogs that handle less challenging species in an acceptable manner often can't successfully handle ruffed grouse. Accomplished grouse dogs will, however, successfully make the transition to other upland species. This transition may require an adjustment in range. The innate intelligence and compliant, cooperative temperament that is characteristic of our Elhew Pointers, ensures that they readily adjust to the cover at hand. Whether you hunt ruffed grouse or another upland bird, you will be delighted with one of our Elhew grouse dogs.

Our Breeding Program

We hunt, and breed, only pure Elhew Pointers with lineage tracing exclusively to matings personally designed by Elhew Kennels' founder, Robert G. Wehle. Our dogs are not outcrossed to non-Elhew horseback field trial, or bench show, pointers. The conformation, temperament, and performance characteristics of dogs from such outcrosses are, in our experience, unpredictable.

From our proven wild bird dogs we will produce a few exceptional litters of puppies each year. Our dogs are all relatively close-up to four time champion Elhew Strike through his progeny - McGoo, Sea Wolf, Snakefoot, Striking Kiwi, Kelly, Miss Frisky, and Jubilee. It is our opinion that Strike was the most outstanding performer and prepotent sire ever produced by Elhew Kennels' master breeder, Bob Wehle. Strike, and his sister Dancing Gypsy, therefore, appear multiple times in every Superior Pointer's pedigree. We particularly favor dogs descending from the Elhew Strike x Elhew Kiwi nick. In our experience, such dogs are well-made, possess uncommon natural ability, train easily, mature relatively early, exhibit exceptional character around game, and make compliant family companions.

At Superior Pointers we are dedicated not only to maintaining, but continuously improving, the Elhew Pointer as a class shooting dog. Our primary breeding objective is to produce intelligent, trainable, sound, classy Elhew Pointers with an abundance of natural ability for discriminating walking bird hunters by intelligently matching exceptional, complementary, sires and dams accomplished on wild birds. We think that Bob Wehle would approve.