Steadiness?

[Nickheref]

What has me almost apoplectic with fury is dogs who chase off after a bird that is missed for a couple of hundred yards with its owner bellowing at it all the time, the dog gives up and then meanders back flushing everything between the line of guns and the dog and 1 bird comes back over the guns and the owner tries to claim is was a good bit of work quietly ignoring all the birds that went in another direction, particularly when birds are scarce and it might just have cleared the best holding area for miles around. I had to stop shooting with a chap like that otherwise only one of us would have walked away!!

[PRH]

I have been a guest at a shoot one day a season for last 5 or so years. It is a syndicate based farm shoot with lovely folk and good ground. And a beater with a spaniel which manages to run through every drive and appear before the guns 10 mins before the beating line. No one says a word, and no it isn’t the farmer’s spaniel! The beater always seems very pleased with himself and the dog, despite the fact it would be a much better shoot if the dog stayed at home.

As a gun with a dog it is frustrating to see picking up dogs mid drive around and about the guns picking dead birds, almost as frustrating as watching guns walk off the peg without any notion of what they have shot and where it landed. It feels a bit as if the basics are being lost.

[Nickheref]

The beater always seems very pleased with himself and the dog, despite the fact it would be a much better shoot if the dog stayed at home.

I am sure he will tell anyone who will listen that it is a good working dog!!