Part 25

In the course of a six or seven hour day, to work a party, you will need, if you work them singly, three experienced dogs and two younger ones coming on to work.

In Caithness and Sutherland necessarily wide ranging a little over two hours early in the season, is enough for an old dog, and less for a young one coming on, and four days a week is about as much as they will do, and if the gun shoots four days a week, it is as much as he can do to shoot properly. A man who is careful of himself will get more birds in four easy days, than the enthusiast who works long hours and six days.

If you want to get birds, keep yourself and dogs and gillies fresh and in good form, and so that when birds rise they shall also fall.

I have heard of dogs that will work all day long and every day as well, but I have never yet been fortunate enough to come across that very remarkable and desirable strain.

Here let me give a sketch that is no mere flight of fancy.

The 26th of August, my birthday.

It is a sunny day with a gentle balmy wind, and the heather, which is full in bloom, is dusting your boots white with its pollen.

It is a lazy day for birds, and they will not much care to run.

Daisy is ranging pretty wide, and, getting an indication of birds, pulls up and looks over her shoulder towards her master.

"Has she birds, David?" "She is no sure." You walk slowly up to Daisy, she draws on, and her point gradually stiffens; another twenty yards and she stops full point; you both walk on, the old cock bird rises first at twenty-five yards, and he goes down, you load, and the hen and three young birds rise within ten yards.

Take it calmly, don't smash up the old hen by taking her too soon, and, after her, down with one of the young birds; load quietly and quickly. Daisy stops where she is; up gets another bird and that goes down.

Smoker is sent forward, and he gathers and brings in the old hen and two young birds from out of the deep heather.

No doubt the old cock is a runner.

David and Daisy sit down whilst I go forward and put Smoker on to where the old bird dropped.

We sit and watch him; see the old dog threading the scent at a quick pace in and out amongst the peat hags.

Oh dear, the bird has taken down the burn and we may lose him.

But no; an hundred yards below out comes Smoker from the burn triumphant, with the old cock, which he delivers up without a scratch save the broken pinion.

Daisy is now away to find a fresh point. What has Smoker pointing there, with a look that says as plain as dogs can speak, that fool, Daisy, who thinks so much of herself in her hurry to get fresh points, has left a close sitting bird in that tuft of good heather.

Yes, Smoker is right, as he always is in all he does, and another bird is flushed and bagged.

The brood was seven, and now but two away, thanks to the studious care and intelligence of my two four-footed friends.

And what fine birds, with their white speckled breasts! the young ones as large as the old ones.

We pile them in a heap for the gillie to collect as he comes along.

Dear old Daisy, there were better dogs with better noses and grander action, but the loving creature did her very best to bring birds to bag by care and gentleness, and she did it too.

That retriever, Smoker, the second of his name, has now passed away, and his place taken by a worthy third, was a character.

Amongst other things he was born defective in the power of propagation.

I bred him from a bitch that I bought in Norfolk solely to breed him from; the father was a dog belonging to a keeper of Col. Kenyon Slaney.

There were only two dogs in the litter, all the others being bitches.

He was a poor puny thing, and would have been consigned to the bucket with sundry of his sisters, had there been other dogs in the litter.