Mike, a young game warden in the early 1980s, purchased his first Drathaar from James Dunn. His name was Franko vom Dunnhof, and he was the beginning of a lifelong enthusiasm for everything Drahthaar. Mike grew up hunting anything and everything, training his first versatile dog (a Shorthair/Lab mix) as a teenager, and the Drahthaar was the perfect compliment to a versatile hunting style. After running Franko, his son Oz, and other males through the JGHV system, Mike became a performance judge and decided to start his own kennel with his wife, Jeanne. The Jagdkönig kennel name means "hunt king" and, for us, stands for the nobility and outstanding character of our Drahthaars. 

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Arrow vom Jagdkönig from our "A" litter was the first female we kept-- she is still on all of our dogs' ahnentafeln (pedigrees) today. Since then, we have kept a female or multiple females from each generation, fostering a direct maternal line. We're producing our eleventh generation of Jagdkönig pups this breeding season. We hunt, train, and test all of our own females, the majority of whom we have run Prize I though the JGHV VGP test. Mike has been a performance judge for decades and is also a blood tracking and breed show judge. Johnathan and Elizabeth are also performance judges in the JGHV and VDD breed judges. We spend much of the fall and winter hunting in the Midwest, Great Plains, and Upper Midwest with occasional excursions to Texas, Oklahoma, or another area of the country. We hunt upland, waterfowl, use our dogs to blood track, hunt furred predators, squirrels, rabbits, and shed hunt. Much of the spring and summer seasons are spent raising puppies and training for hunting/JGHV tests. When we're not hunting, training, or raising pups, we host JGHV tests every year and engage in a number of volunteer efforts with VDD-GNA. 

 

The kennel became a true family affair when Mike and Jeanne's daughter, Elizabeth, married a fellow hunter and Drahthaar owner, Johnathan Pearson. They met at the 2011 Armbruster while Johnathan was running his male, Eddy vom Millerhaus. Elizabeth ran Rachel II vom Jagdkönig through the VJP, HZP, and VGP in 2014. She started her own kennel (v.d. Jagdkönigin "from the hunt queen"), and they guided upland hunts as well as hosted JGHV tests at Orapax Hunting Preserve near their home in Virginia. Johnathan and Elizabeth decided to move back to the farm in 2018 after the birth of their daughter, Elsie, and now hunt, train, and host tests with Mike and Jeanne. Lane Michael joined the pack in 2020, so now he and Elsie are our puppy assistants and junior dog wranglers. 

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Our goal is to produce high quality hunting companions and give you the tools to make your dog the best he or she can be. We're committed to helping our puppy buyers every step of the way from take home to any level of training you want to accomplish. All of our puppy buyers have an open invite to come train at the farm.