A season for family dogs

With more shoots planning less formal days, the old-style mooching gundog will be in its element

- JANET MENZIES

Wonderful as he undoubtedly is, does your dog have more natural ability than manners? Do you value his nose more highly than his shaky steadiness? Is his ease of handling more of a feature than his drive? Cheer up, your dog’s day has come. The shooting season ahead will be one of make-do-and-mend. Versatility, ingenuity and all-round Blitz spirit will be the qualities we recognise and prize in our dogs if they are to get us through.

Forget those field trial champions who can be handled onto a sixpence and then bring back the bird to you presented on a silver platter. It’s time to get old Bertie out, who knows exactly where last year’s cock pheasant is hiding and will wait for you to get into position. So what if Bertie’s mouth isn’t quite as velvety as it might be – that cock bird will be so tough you couldn’t damage it with pliers. Rediscovering the fun and games of informal shooting on stand-one/beat-one days will save the season for many of us.

Rough shooting and its variants inevitably come to the fore during difficult times. The stand/beat shoot became popular in the years of post-war austerity during the 1950s. Andrew Middle and his brother, Paul, still run the shoot originally started by their father, Brian. Middle remembers: “Dad set the shoot up in the 1950s and it has a strong tradition locally. He joined up with another local farmer, Reg Wilkins, when myxomatosis came in. They had always shot rabbits up until then, so they reared 25 or 30 pheasants under broody hens. Their percentage was probably 4% and they didn’t know about stops or anything like that. My grandfather had done a lot of felling during the war, so it was all gorse and bramble and it was alive with foxes. That’s how it started off. It was a farmers’ shoot in those days and now there are no farmers in the syndicate any more.”