PYLESVILLE - Dottie was up early the day after Thanksgiving, quivering with excitement and cold under a pearly gray sky, ready to hunt.

If this contestant in the North American Gun Dog Association event was anxious, as she sat obediently at the edge of a soybean field in northern Harford County yesterday, she didn't let on.

But, like the other dozen or so dogs in the contest, Dottie had reason to look nervously at her teammate, the hunter-handler standing in the field beside her.

Humans are, after all, the weaker link in these competitions.

"Usually, the dog won't be the problem," said Denis Witmer, a trainer who brought several dogs yesterday from the Eastern Shore. "What happens is you get a little bit of adrenaline flowing and the hunter is going to be the weak point."

Yesterday's event, a regional hunting contest where dog and hunter are equally tested, was held by Mason-Dixon Game Outfitters, a private preserve owned by Jim and Kim Lewis of Pylesville.

Such preserves are becoming essential to hunting as development encroaches on open space and a lack of food pushes some animals of prey farther away.

Mason-Dixon is the sole East Coast representative of the North American Gun Dog Association, a 2-year-old group that has numerous members in Western states and will hold its national competition in Colorado in the spring.

About a dozen hunters came to compete, some from as far as Massachusetts.

Dogs in the field included English setters, English pointers and German wirehaired pointers, as well as black Labradors.

The association's events rate both dog and hunter, unlike many events held by the half-dozen or so other U.S. sporting dog clubs and associations. And that, hunters and organizers said, is what makes these events so much fun.

"If you've got a wonderful dog but you can't hit squat, you're not going to win. It's very challenging," said Kim Lewis, who added that North American Gun Dog events are unique because they are open to registered and unregistered dogs of all ages.

So, if you've got a wonderful dog that's a mix of this and that, you can bring it out and enter it alongside expensive purebloods.

"That makes it nice, too," said Scott Lee, a friend of the Lewises from Felton, Pa., who came down to lend a hand. "You have people who don't have the top-of-the-line hunting dog, and they're still interested" in competing.

Here's how the contest works: Hunter-dog teams have four birds, eight shells and 20 minutes to hunt. A scorer accompanies the pair and grades them on how quickly the dog finds the bird, whether the hunter fells the bird and how well the dog retrieves.

Pointers must stay on point until the hunter raises the bird. Flushing breeds, like Labradors, must run up and get the bird to fly. The fewer shots taken, the higher the score, and all retrievals must be brought to the hunter's hand.

Human-canine teams compete in regional events like the Mason-Dixon competition, and have to place in one to advance to the nationals in the spring.

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Lewis said it's tough for the dogs to watch the birds get away, no matter how well they're trained. "Their natural instinct is to go get that bird," he said. "We're the ones that made them stop."

For the Lewises, the changing nature of hunting and agriculture come together for them in the gun dog events.

Portions of the family's 360-acre dairy and crop farm are set aside as a hunting preserve, and the proceeds add a steady income to the farm in a time where low milk prices no longer cover feed costs, Kim Lewis said.

She said more corporate hunters are coming out, too. They tell her, "We used to take our customers golfing, but this is more fun."

Kim Lewis also teaches at North Harford High School and sometimes finds a student or two who likes to come out and help at events.

Yesterday, Tanner Crowl, 17, who hopes to continue farming his family's 235-acre spread near Rocks State Park, was riding a four-wheel ATV through the fields, placing the pheasants and chukars.

The method is pretty simple: Shake the birds a bit to make them dizzy, tuck their heads under a wing and lay them down. Most of the time, they go to sleep for a minute or two. That gives Tanner just enough time to slip away.

While hunters waited their turn yesterday, they gathered in a heavy tent around a barrel-drum heater, drank coffee and talked shop. A few breeders dropped by the registration tent during the day to show off puppies, some of which sell for about $500.

Every once in a while, someone would arrive and comment on the huge Thanksgiving-Friday crowds at shopping centers they passed on the road. Heads shook and laughs rolled out of the tent and across the open field.

Up on the ridge, Dottie, a pointer, was the first dog out. A show dog with British parents, Dottie is sometime labeled a "froo froo" dog in hunting circles, said her owner, Eric Rentzel of York, Pa., a tool-and-die salesman and a guide at Mason-Dixon.

But when the whistle blew yesterday, Dottie pounced along the hilltop, which earlier in the year had been planted with soybeans.

She quartered the field, zigzagging methodically, searching for the scent of the pheasants and chukars that had been hidden among the dried plants. With a sense of smell that is 400 times sharper than a human's, dogs can detect a bird from afar and quickly distinguish whether it is alive or dead.

Rentzel, who went to the North American Gun Dog Association national contest last year, worked with her, using voice and whistle commands.

"Come, Dottie! Come! Let's go," his voice rang along the ridge. Dottie sprinted and circled, darting through plants before freezing in her trademark point, with paw curled and tail snapped still.

Rentzel and Dottie felled four birds in about 14 minutes, putting them behind his 8-minute time of last year, but he was still happy with their time.

The team took second and third in the open pointing division. Witmer, the trainer from the Eastern Shore, won both the open pointing and open flushing categories.

During the week, Dottie is a certified therapy dog, which takes her to hospitals and nursing homes. "This is her passion," Rentzel said, smiling, "but she's a total couch potato when we go" to visit patients.

The North American Gun Dog Association event continues today. Hunters can walk on to the field. Registration fees range from about $90 to $110. Mason-Dixon Game Outfitters is at 2200 Channel Road in northern Harford County. Information: 410-452-8472.