Shooting Times & Country Magazine
It’s the end of an era
The pointer and setter trialling season came to a close on the royal Norfolk estate on a day of historic moment, says David Tomlinson
TRULY HISTORIC DAYS can rarely be anticipated. One such day was Thursday, 8 September. I had left my home in Suffolk early in order to arrive in time for the Pointer Club’s field trial meeting on HM The Queen’s Sandringham Estate. The meet itself was in a field at Anmer, the approach track muddy after a night of rain. Would the rain improve the scenting conditions? The dampness of the ground was a novelty after a summer of drought.
I arrived to find the car park already filled with 4x4 pickup trucks, the vehicle of choice of the trialling fraternity. Dogs in a variety of colours, if not shapes, were out and being readied for the first contest of the day: a novice pointer and setter stake. Novices are the first rung on the competition ladder, so the majority of the dogs running were youngsters.
Head high
Though I’d travelled to Sandringham to watch the trial, I hadn’t come to write a blow-by-blow account of proceedings. I have been lucky enough to have watched pointers and setters many times, but I can hardly claim to have the expertise to write about these dogs with any real authority. No, I’d come to enjoy observing the most athletic of all our gundog breeds doing what they are best at, which is galloping, head high, in search of birds.
I found an end-of-term atmosphere among the handlers at the stubble field where the trial was to be run.
The pointer and setter trialling season is a long one, starting in Scotland on grouse in March, then moving to East Anglia on partridges and pheasants in April. It pauses for the nesting season, then recommences on the grouse moors of northern England in July and Scotland in August.
The season culminates in the Champion Stake, held alternately in Scotland and England, just before the start of grouse shooting on 12 August. Then there’s a break of three weeks, when many of the dogs get to work the grouse for real, before the trialling year ends with a week of competition on West Norfolk’s great estates — Sandringham and Houghton.
The Norfolk week gives the chance for those of us who live a long way from the grouse moors to see these spectacular dogs in action. It also gives the dogs themselves a very different challenge to pointing grouse, on totally different ground to what they are used to.
“The very first pointer and setter trials were held on grey partridges over 150 years ago”
Partridges and pheasants are the quarry, though as the day demonstrated, getting a point on either bird is a considerable challenge. Historically, the very first pointer and setter trials were held on grey partridges more than 150 years ago, and it was many years before the Champion Stake moved north to test these dogs on grouse.
Today grey partridges are, of course, rare or absent from many
parts of Britain where they were once abundant, but North Norfolk remains a stronghold. It seems likely that they enjoyed a good breeding season this year, too, but when I asked one of the Sandringham keepers how well they had fared, he said: “Nobody knows for sure. At this time of the year, they tend to stay in the hedges or cover strips during the day, only
venturing out on to the stubbles in the early morning and evening. Counting them is challenging.”
Highly tuned
Finding them is also challenging, even with a highly tuned pointing dog. Frustratingly, not one of the 23 runners in the novice stake managed to point a bird of any description, though a good covey of partridges was bumped (flushed) by one of the runners. John Naylor’s five-year-old English setter, Solid Gold’s Asso, did get a fine point, but it was on a hare, not a bird.
To win an award in a pointer and setter stake, a dog has to produce (point) birds. However, John’s dog was rewarded for his efforts, as he was given the Guns’ choice rosette, the only award presented.
Pointers and setters usually run together in field trials, but in the afternoon we had the Pointer Club’s own open stake, restricted to pointers. There was a strong entry with many experienced handlers and dogs, including Terry Harris’s dog FTCH Koram Kasbah at Sparkfield, the runner-up in the Champion Stake in August, where he was also the highest-placed pointer. Frustratingly, even the open dogs, running in sugar beet, struggled and for a time it looked as if there would be no awards. Then, in a brief but unpleasantly heavy shower of rain, Carole Brown’s sevenyear-old bitch, Crahan Sapphire, had a successful point, sufficient for judges Sara Chichester and Linda Westron to award her first place.
It was a fitting win, for Carole is not only the hard-working field trial secretary of the Pointer Club, but one of the most popular handlers on the circuit. It also made Crahan Sapphire up to field trial champion.
An excellent and enjoyable day’s sport ended with a hog roast, but as we sat down to enjoy the feast, we heard the sad news that The Queen had died, making this the last ever trial to be held by gracious permission of Her Majesty on any of the royal estates. The gundog world had lost its greatest supporter.