Well I have found out that the Demon is not gunshy...he spent this morning totally ignoring the bangs and crashes, the birds falling from the sky and me telling him to damn well heel Ghilli, on the other hand, had a wonderful time hunting, pointing, flushing and retrieving also a bit of swimming. She stunk to high heaven of eau de drainage ditch when we got home so she has had a bath for the show tomorrow. After all that the guns only managed to bring down 8 1/2 brace of pheasant, 6 brace of duck and a partridge
Any one else going to Coventry Gundog tomorrow...if so come and make yourselves known and we can have a cuppa [or something]
WiskeyJaR
sounds like you had fun.
Question on terms....Beating Day??? What actually is this?, Do you have a seperate group of hunters and a group that just beats the brush? Over here we tend to beat the brush....flush the birds...ourselves. course we...or me at least...does alot of solo hunting, so its up to the hunter and dog to do every thing our selves.
Another term...I here you all talk about "pickup days"...again, are there seperate groups that shoot and then another that picks up?
windem bang
Hi Whiskey, you guessed it just about right. The bigger shoots in this country have more or less separate groups of participants. The "guns" do all the shooting, only the guns carry guns. They may or may not have dogs of their own with them. It is normal practice for ONLY winged game to be shot. The guns dogs, if used at all, are only used for retrieving near the guns "peg" ( the place he has been allocated to stand) These dogs are never allowed to hunt for unshot birds.
The beaters usually accompanied by at least one gamekeeper walk towards the guns who are at their pegs. The beaters often have dogs hunting the woodlands or root crops etc. and they flush the birds hiding there towards the guns. Sometimes the dogs are not allowed to hunt and the keeper adjusts the line of beaters to give a steady trickle of birds pushed over the guns by the waving of flags or perhaps by tapping with sticks at the cover. Beaters dogs might never get to retrieve anything for the entire day, they are usually only there to hunt. Many breeds including non-gundog breeds are used for this but spaniels and labs are probably the most popular.
Pickers up are the people who stand behind the guns with retrieving dogs.
If a picker up stands fairly close behind the guns his dog(s) will probably get a lot of retrieving. On the bigger shoots it is not unusual for more than 50 birds (usually pheasants) to be shot on one drive. There is often 5 or 6 drives in a day.
As a picker up I usually go as a "back marker" I get fewer birds to retrieve but a lot of those birds are only lightly pricked, some of them will be runners. I normally stand as much as 150 yards behind the guns, it all depends on how much cover there is out behind and whether or not the ground behind the guns will be part of another drive.
I find this more interesting work than picking up just behind the guns. Fewer retrieves but more interesting dogwork.My dogs usually quickly become good at following runners, I never teach my dogs to follow blood trails, they teach themselves this pretty quickly if I leave them alone and don't try to handle too much.
So at a driven shoot in this country there are really 3 groups of dogs, the guns dogs which do little or nothing, the beaters dogs which do most of the hunting and flushing and the picking up dogs which do most of the retrieving.
I suppose it seems a bit over-complicated if you're not used to it!
Ghilli, on the other hand, had a wonderful time hunting, pointing, flushing and retrieving also a bit of swimming. She stunk to high heaven of eau de drainage ditch when we got home so she has had a bath for the show tomorrow. After all that the guns only managed to bring down 8 1/2 brace of pheasant, 6 brace of duck and a partridge 