The Complete English Wing Shot

by George Teasdale Teasdale-Buckell

On the other hand, it is by no means the most experienced field trial men who have the best chance of victory, provided the canine blood is the same for all competitors.

What natural selection and the survival of the fittest has done for the fox and other scent-hunting animals, field trial selection has done for pointers and setters since the first public trial was held in 1865. It is not contended that working dogs have improved over the whole of this period, but the vast superiority of the field trial breeds over others shows what all would have declined to if it had not been for the institutions that annually indicate the best.

But during the last half-dozen years there has been a general, and it is said unaccountable, lack of good brace work at the field trials. The author has satisfied himself of the reason of this strange lack of the highest exhibition of breaking at a time when the dogs are higher broken and more credit is given for breaking than ever before. This appears paradoxical, but the fact is that the premium on high breaking has led to the choice of dogs as sires and dams that are easy to break, and this again to the discounting of courage. Some worthy usurper, who became a rightful monarch, is said to have watched a spider attempt for nine times to fasten his web upon a coveted spot and succeed in the end. To hunt a brace of dogs properly, it is necessary to have material as persevering as the only spider in history. What is required is that your dogs should find all the game. In order that this should be done, they must beat all the ground, and there is always one corner in a field that nature induces the dogs to leave behind. The corner to right or left of the spot at which the dogs are started is sure to be slightly down wind of the starting-place. The natural tendency is to investigate up wind, and it may be necessary for a breaker to start his dogs ten or twenty times, and to call them back as often, before he can make them understand that they are to “sink the wind,” are to drop back, as it were, behind it, and do the usually neglected corner before pressing forward and investigating the scent of game that is probably all the time coming from up-wind of them. But it is only the very highest-couraged dogs that can be expected to give cheerful obedience during the constant interference that the teaching of this useful lesson involves. The point the author wishes to make is, that it is necessary to breed for courage and break for docility, and that this is exactly contrary to the breeding for docility that has been done. This process, which has been intended to improve breaking, has eliminated the best brace work and the best quartering.

It is not intended to convey the idea that very close quartering is a good feature. The dog should fully occupy his time, and range to the capacity of his nose. To say a dog is going too wide may easily be a great mistake. It is often said that a pointer or setter misses ground, but although some people think that game cannot be missed if ground is beaten in geometric figures, with parallel lines near together, it is often to be observed that those which most obviously leave no ground behind them are just those that leave birds behind them. If we could only smell as dogs do for ten minutes, we should understand them much better. It seems wonderful that these animals can often detect a pair of little partridges at 150 to 200 yards away, while, even in our own hands, we men cannot smell the birds at all. The variety in the olfactory powers of the dog sinks almost at one end to that of the man, but at the other is entirely beyond his power of thinking. Consequently, when we set any limitation on the width of ranging, or the width between the parallels in the range, we are often asking the dogs to beat the ground twice or three times, which is opposed to the best canine nature. The author is careless how much ground dogs leave behind provided they leave no game behind. Consequently, if they start fairly, so as to get the wind of the near corners, they may be assumed to know the measure of their own noses, and to beat wide or narrow, and with parallel quarterings near, or far apart, as necessary. The wider in both cases the better, provided they leave no game behind. If they commit this fault, they are only wild, and may be assumed to be scamping their work.

It has often happened that the most capable dogs in a stake have run great risks of being thrown out for an appearance of scamping their ground, when, as a matter of fact, they were leaving no game behind, and knew it. This generally happens when the scent is extra good and the dogs know that they can take what are regarded as liberties in their range. But when scent is bad, on hot August days, and the pollen is flying from the heather bloom, these wide rangers will be narrow enough, and will be the only dogs that can find at all. Then those that have had for safety to hunt in narrow parallels in good scent, will be as unable as a man to smell a grouse. It is for this reason that the writer, when judging at a field trial, would never condemn wide or forward ranging unless game was actually proved to be left behind. Quartering is the means to an end, and not the end itself, and it was far more effectively done at field trials years ago, before people began to treat it as an end in itself. Since then brace work has declined, and brace work had always been that in which it was expected, and happened, that the winners should find everything on their ground, and neither flush nor miss anything.

The best natural quarterers (or dogs, for that matter) will invariably be those that alter their methods to suit the occasion. When game is scarce, they will hunt wide, because, in the absence of the scent of game pervading the atmosphere, they can detect the presence of the game at far greater distances than when the scent is everywhere.

They will hunt wide also in good scent.

Conversely, in bad scent they will hunt closely, and when birds are plentiful, or scattered and lying close, they will do so also, and to the author this variation of beat to suit the occasion is by far the greatest proof of nose and sense.

Everybody likes to see a dog draw nicely and sharply up a good distance, and point, knowing precisely where the game is; but these appearances are often deceptive. Nobody knows how far the birds have run, or how much of the draw was due to the foot scent and how little to the body scent. These appearances of good nose have to be taken in conjunction with the manner of beating the ground, before a just estimate of the olfactory powers can be quickly formed. This is made all the more difficult, because a dog of poor courage will generally draw to game as soon as he detects foot scents, whereas the highest-couraged and best quarterers will often gallop over those scents, recognising but scouting the temptation, and will only draw up to body scent.

The difference between foot and body scents is not very well understood by anyone except the dog, and not always by him. Very much nonsense has been written on the subject. The author has noticed comments in the Press showing that the writers believed the foot scent to be an emanation from the feet in contact with the ground. The foot scent is the path of scent left by an animal that has moved away. The author has observed it left by a flying grouse, and also by a diving otter. In neither case could the feet have had anything to do with the matter. But that does not help us to know how the dog detects the difference between the volatile matter that comes direct from the game to the dog’s nose, and the same exudation that first hangs in the air, upon the water, bubbles up from the water, clings to vegetation, or to earth, before it reaches the dog’s nose. It is obviously not a question of strength of scent, for a dog having missed a brace of close-crouched partridges will instantly find the spot they rose from after they have gone, proving that, often enough, the foot scent is very much the stronger.