Fox-Red Is The New Black

They’re taking the shooting world by storm as the gundog of the moment, but fox-reds go back further than you might think, discovers Katy Birchall

- Katy Birchall

WHAT’S in a colour?’ Had Shakespeare been around a few centuries later and a labrador man, this surely would have been the real question troubling the two households in fair Verona. Much like the love between a Montague and a Capulet, the best labrador colour can be a controversial affair. Black remains the dominant shade in the shooting field, but the noticeable rise in popularity of a certain shade of yellow has got us asking if red could be the new black.

‘The fox-red colour is really very striking,’ declares Lt-Gen Sir Barney White-Spunner, former executive chairman of the Countryside Alliance. Currently the owner of two labradors, his family has kept fox-reds for years. ‘People are always interested in where they’ve come from—they often get mistaken for Rhodesian ridgebacks, which can be a bit irritating. They’re lovely dogs—very companionable and terribly patient. They just love their shooting and all of ours have had tremendous noses, which makes a huge difference.’

Sam Rickitt saw a fox-red labrador for the first time when he was out shooting in Leicestershire some six years ago. ‘One of the pickers-up had one,’ he remembers.

‘The dog worked beautifully and was lovely to watch.’ A few years later, Mr Rickitt found himself the proud owner of fox-red Bramble, a birthday gift from his wife, deputy editor of The Field Ali Henton.

Training Bramble with the help of Phil Garton of Fieldcrest Gundogs—‘he’s training me as much as the dog, if I’m honest’— Mr Rickitt is pleased to find that she isn’t only a pretty face. Halfway through this past season—her first full one—she picked up 43 birds on a shoot in Derbyshire.