Have big teams had their day?

The pandemic may well have a lasting effect on our sport, says David Tomlinson, with a return to smaller days and rough shooting – and, perhaps, the omnipresence of the springer spaniel

-  David Tomlinson

ONE of the familiar sights in the British shooting field, at least on driven shoots, is that of a picker-up walking with half-a-dozen dogs at heel. It’s something that we take for granted, but it’s a relatively new phenomenon. Half a century ago, few people worked more than a couple of retrievers at the same time, but the growth in commercial shoots and the demand for bigger bags led to handlers recruiting more and more dogs to their teams. A 500-bird day requires a lot of dog power, so five or six pickers-up, together with 20 or 30 dogs, is quite normal.

No one knows quite what the long-term impact of the pandemic on shooting will be, but it seems likely that there will be a sizeable number of commercial shoots that will cease operating altogether, while many others will be reducing the number of birds they release and the number of days they shoot. If this happens, then the demand for picking-up teams will diminish accordingly.