The Hunting Trait...

As much as we can all theorize, there is still the factor of pure luck that plays into the game. As Barlow has mentioned prior, this is the reason that 100% cull-free litters of performance dogs will never be mass produced.

As has also been discussed above, many "breeders" (using the term loosely here) don't pay near enough attention to prepotency. No one would argue with the idea of breeding the best of each consecutive litter, but I will agree that performace in the field doesn't necessarily equate to performance in the whelping box. A long line of well bred dogs has a percentage of luck factored into the breedings in addition to all the knowledge of the breeder.

Owning a sure-enough bang up hunting dog that has been proven as a producer is a pretty rare thing. Having a female as I describe, is like having won the lottery in my opinion (as I believe the female has a greater influency on the progeny....but that's an entirely different topic).