A New Kind Of Macnab

David Tomlinson finds some entertainment in back issues of a 1980s sporting title called The Working Gundog, with a sense of déjà vu…

DOES ANYONE remember a magazine called The Working Gundog that flourished in the late 1980s? Published quarterly, priced at £1 including postage, it was aimed directly at the field trialling community, with reports of trials and publication of results. It also included a variety of articles that, 30 years later, make interesting reading. I had never seen the magazine until recently, when a shooting friend, Martin, passed a few copies on to me. 

Thirty years is a long time, but you won’t be surprised to know that there are quite a few gundog handlers who were active then who are still around. Several of the main topics of discussion from then are being debated today with equal passion.

In issue number 10, for example — not dated, but as it carried a report of the 1986 Retriever Championship it must have been published in early 1987 — Peter Clulee posed the question: “Are standards slipping?” If the name is familiar, it is because Peter’s son, Will, is one of our leading spaniel handlers.

“Field trials were never intended to be used as a training ground nor a venue where dogs and handlers could gain experience, yet while judging and as a fellow competitor I have heard at first hand handlers admitting their dogs have not been properly shot over,” wrote Clulee. He goes on to decry handlers running dogs that they know “full well are not up to standard... it makes a mockery of the whole concept of trialling”.