Shooting Times & Country Magazine

Heather heaven or heather hell?

Working on the moors is a real test for spaniels, both in terms of the thick cover and the stamina the terrain requires, writes Nick Ridley

I‘ve been lucky enough over the years to have worked my spaniels in all sorts of different cover, ranging from thick laid bracken to the spaniel handler’s nightmare: standing maize. On more than one occasion, I have been asked what I consider to be the hardest cover for a spaniel to deal with. The obvious answer is thick brambles, which as anyone who spends time in the beating line or out rough shooting will tell you is even more challengin­g on a frosty day when there is little give in the thornencru­sted fronds.

Yet a hard-going spaniel that has been properly introduced to cover during its training seems to revel in the thick stuff . One of my cockers seems to be almost sadistic in the way he hits bramble patches, and it really is a case of “the thicker the better”. I think cockers have a slight advantage over springers as they will get right underneath and work any rabbit or deer runs, whereas I have seen plenty of springers that literally

crash and bash over and through bramble. But, to be fair, both styles normally extradite any hiding game.

However, despite the above I would suggest that there is another kind of cover that can really be hard work for any spaniel, not only in terms of the actual cover but also the terrain that will test the stamina of the fittest dog and handler. I first had the chance to work a spaniel on a heather grouse moor over 25 years ago and it is something I shall never forget. At the time, I had a small blue roan cocker bitch called Sweep, and I had been invited to the North York Moors to shoot a few rabbits over her. While I was there, I also got the chance to help pick up on a driven grouse day.

The little dog had never experience­d anything like the

heather and she really struggled, not only in physically getting about but also finding any shot birds.

Nose deep

A heather-clad moor can be a torturous place for a dog, especially at the height of summer when the grouse season starts. First of all, there is the pollen, vast acres of the stuff, and imagine what it must be like for a spaniel hunting low to the ground, 300 million scent receptors attempting to hoover up the slightest whiff of a shot grouse. It is just incredible that they ever manage to locate any game, especially when it has fallen deep into the scented stuff, which brings us on to another challenge when working heather.

If you ever get the chance to watch a novice dog hunting on a moor for the first time, you will see that the dog will more than likely bounce over the cover, totally confused as how to work it. Any quarry will be tucked up deep below, and a dog pretending it’s a kangaroo will never find anything. On the other hand, watch an experience­d spaniel and you will see how it’s learned to get down underneath the woody stems and push along, parting the heather, a bit like Moses and the

Red Sea. It will have learned through experience to use the rabbit runs to help work the area thoroughly.

For us handlers, walking among heather can really be draining and it is surprising how dense heather can be and how abrasive the stems are. That can be even worse in areas where there are large patches of rank heather. In these places, the heather has been allowed to grow unmanaged, and the woody stems are as tough as old boots — which, by the way, you will definitely need, and decent gaiters too.

A small dog like a cocker or springer will be hunting ‘belly deep’, and by the end of the day their undersides will be scratched and cut

“A dog pretending it’s a kangaroo will never have a chance of finding anything”

to pieces, so they need plenty of posthuntin­g care when back at home or in the kennels.

Another factor to bear in mind is that on a heather moor there is little or no shelter from the heat of a late summer’s day, or indeed in a sudden downpour. It is a tough place to work a dog, and precaution­s and provisions should always be taken. When

picking up it is a good idea to rotate your team, especially early in the season when dogs are not fully work fit.

Bun fun

If taking on grouse on a heather moor could be considered the ultimate in shooting terms, then hunting rabbits on heather moorland is by far the most challengin­g pursuit for Gun and dog combined. I find the whole rabbiting situation ‘up North’ quite interestin­g. It is commonplac­e for serious gundog trainers to travel hundreds of miles to shoot rabbits over their dogs, and the top field trial spaniels do have a lot of rabbits shot over them.

In the past, I have asked numerous handlers why this situation has developed, especially with the spaniel trainers, and it turns out it is all to do with accuracy. A good rabbit dog, often working in light cover, has to be extremely precise in everything it does. It must work a close pattern and be a very good game-finder. Heavy cover will test a dog’s courage, but rabbits sitting tightly in heather will severely test its game-finding ability. It must stop instantly to the flush and then collect its retrieve with minimum handling.

In the white grass and heather that make up most of the rabbit ground, everything can be seen. The dog’s pattern has to be near perfect and it must be totally steady as rabbits will literally be flushed from right under its nose. Once again, a spaniel has to learn how to work the cover, and a rabbit sitting tight under a canopy of

pink flowers will emit very little scent and may well be reluctant to flush until the last minute.

When hunting the rushes and white grass that share the landscape with the heather, quite often a spaniel will flush a rabbit but not see it. That is particular­ly useful when initially introducin­g a young dog that needs to learn to get its nose down but is not totally steady. In contrast, when a rabbit flushes out of heather it is very visible to the dog and this can be very tempting. And, as already mentioned, it takes a lot of training and skilled handling to be able to shoot any kind of ground game over a gundog.

Watching a spaniel hit a wall of bramble is certainly impressive, and how they come out of it generally

unscathed other than the occasional cut tongue or sore eyes I will never understand. A few years ago, I did have a conversati­on with a very experience­d cocker trainer about this very subject and his view was that it was a bit like a rugby player; if he hits a tackle hard there is less chance of injury, but if he were to pull

“It takes skilled handling to shoot any type of ground game over a gundog”

back the chances of getting hurt are much greater.

Watching an experience­d spaniel hunt heather is mesmerisin­g; every scrap of cover is explored and quite often all you will see is the blur of a docked tail as any scent is transmitte­d from one end of the dog’s body to the other. And you had better have your wits about you because, whether it’s a grouse or a rabbit, things can ‘go south’ very quickly.