I must, however, plead guilty (for many good sportsmen will think I evince bad taste) to a predilection for setters—meaning always cautious setters—a partiality, perhaps, attributable to having shot more over wild, uncertain ground than in well-stocked preserves. Doubtless, in a very enclosed country, where game is abundant, pointers are preferable, far preferable, more especially should there be a scarcity of water; but for severe and fast work, and as a servant of all work, there is nothing, I humbly conceive, like the setter.[97] He may be, and generally is, the more difficult to break; but when success has crowned your efforts, what a noble, enduring, sociable, attached animal you possess. I greatly, too, admire his long, stealthy, blood-like action,—(for I am not speaking of the large heavy sort before which in old days whole coveys used to be nettled), and the animated waving of his stern, so strongly indicative of high breeding; though, strange to say, in gracefulness of carriage the fox, when hunting, and actually on game, far excels him. But we are again getting astray beyond our proper limits; let us keep to the subject of dog-breaking.

TO RETRIEVE SECOND SEASON.

538. As it will be your endeavour, during your pupil’s first season, to make him thoroughly stanch and steady, I cannot advise you (as a general rule liable, of course, to many exceptions—one of which is named in [317]), to let him retrieve,—by retrieve I always mean fetch,—until the following year. There is another advantage in the delay. His sagacity will have shown him that the design of every shot is to bag the game—when, therefore, he has once been permitted to pick up a bird, he will be desirous of carrying it immediately to you, and will resist the temptation to loiter with it, mouthing and spoiling it; and however keenly he may have heretofore “sought dead,” he will henceforth search with redoubled zeal, from the delight he will experience in being permitted to carry his game. Moreover, the season’s shooting, without lifting, will have so thoroughly confirmed him in the “down charge,” that the increased[98] inclination to bolt off in search of a falling bird will be successfully resisted. If he has been taught while young to “fetch” ([107], [109], &c.), he will be so anxious to take the birds to you, that instead of there being any difficulty in teaching him this accomplishment, you will often, during his first season, have to restrain him from lifting when he is “pointing dead.” The least encouragement will make him gladly pick up the birds, and give them, as he ought, to no one but yourself.

539. Suppose you possess no regular retriever—if, instead of lifting your game yourself, you accustom one of your pointers or setters to do so, you will occasionally, in some odd manner, bag a bird which you would otherwise inevitably lose. In [97] is given such an instance; and in Scotland, no later than last season, I saw another. An outlying cock-pheasant rose out of stubble. It was a long shot, but he was knocked over, falling into an adjoining piece of turnips. After the “down charge,” a pointer bitch accustomed to retrieve, was sent to fetch him. The moment she approached the bird, up he got, apparently as strong as ever, and flew over some rising ground, but wither, I had no idea, further than suspecting that he was making for a distant cover on forbidden ground. I, therefore, at once gave him up as lost. The dog, however, was more sanguine, for, to my great surprise, off she started in pursuit, clearly imagining it was quite a mistake of the pheasant’s. I soon lost sight of her, but, to my great gratification, I observed her, some little time afterwards, topping the hillock with the bird in her mouth. If she had been young, her chase after the pheasant might only have shown sad unsteadiness and wildness; but as she was a stanch sober old lady, it manifestly evinced nothing but,—it will be safest to say,—much intelligence and discrimination, lest you cavil at the words reason or reflection. I must own I should not.

“With more dogs than one the bird would, almost to a certainty, be torn.”

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ONLY ONE TO RETRIEVE