Better by a distance?

Will a spaniel find shot or pricked game more quickly than a retriever? It all depends, says Peter Moxon, on the type of shooting that you favour

Many people think spaniels tend to be better game-finders than retrievers. All I will say is that, at times, and under certain conditions, spaniels find game more quickly than retrievers and sometimes when the latter have failed completely. A good spaniel that has had a season or two’s experience becomes very reliable on runners, and in certain types of cover there can be no question but that the spaniel is supreme.

Take an instance that occurred on my own shoot. Two partridges were shot and fell into thick clover. In such cases, the bird drops stone dead, penetrates the clover and lies beneath it, the scent being completely masked. Both birds were sought assiduously by Labradors and golden retrievers, which were hunting with heads high and seeking a body scent.

Five different dogs were tried on both birds without success but with the clover field being near the kennels, I slipped back and brought out a couple of springers. These little dogs, with noses down well into the clover, systematically quartered the area where the dead birds were lying and, within a very short while, brought both to hand.

The biased view would be that this instance proves conclusively that spaniels possess better noses than retrievers, but if you give the matter careful consideration, it will become obvious that the conditions definitely favoured the spaniels. They hunt with their noses down and dearly love to poke about in thick stuff, range close and cover the ground more systematically. They have from early training days been encouraged to seek live scents and take an interest in “lines” and thus quest more closely.

“Dead” scents

The retrievers, on the other hand, are used to hunting purely for “dead” and “wounded” scents, usually in more open places. Spaniels that have had a season’s work questing both for shot and unshot game have had far greater opportunities for practising using their noses and distinguishing between scents than have orthodox retrievers with a season’s experience.

A questing spaniel is at work with its nose all the time. The retriever spends the greater part of its shooting days at heel or waiting at a stand and has not the same chances for developing its nose. It is probably safe to say that to attain the same “nose standard” as a questing spaniel, the no-slip retriever requires three times as much work as the former.

The uninitiated may well ask why anyone bothers to use a retriever if a spaniel is so much more efficient. There are, of course, many