hunting dogs

R

rick ervin

Active member
hello everyone does anybody hunt with a springer spaniel what are they like to hunt with i hear good things about them any pic would be good to thanks
 
I assume you know this is primarily a duck hunting oriented site, so: I started with Springers back in the early 80's, as most of my hunting consisted of walking around in the NH woods jumping woodcock, grouse and an occasional duck. My experience, Springers are great, but they are a compromise for duck hunting. The nature of a field Springer is to move. They are coiled springs that didn't start to "calm" down until they were 7+ years old. Seriously they are bred to move, not really what I think of for duck hunting. Their coat is also no where near as warm as a traditional duck dog's plus it picks up every burr in the neighborhood. We had to have Jinks' chest shaved a couple of times just to get all the burrs off. Jinks is/was the smartest dog I've had to date, with a wicked imagination. He's been the only dog I've had that would lie to me, you could also watch him make up his mind as to whether the punishment was worth the crime. Wicked cool dog! He loved to swim and getting him to sit still at waters edge was tough. Not to mention the almost solid white didn't help hide him. I shot my first goose, curled up over Jinks to hold him still and hide the white as the geese dropped in. I'm glad he joined the family for the 15 years he was with us but when he got too old to hunt I switched to labs. They are better designed for the cold weather - big geese hunting I presently do. Pictures in the 80s where taken on film and I didn't take a camera into the wetlands, so hunting pictures are slim to non-existent. But family shots do ;^)

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Scott
 
I've owned springers and labs. Springers are great upland dogs and will retrieve in water just fine, however, in my opinion, their strength is upland. If you hunt upland birds with an occasional waterfowl hunt, a springer is fine.
 
I just had to have my 14 year old lab springer cross put down this month. He was a really good dog. As good as my best pure bred lab and better than 2 otheer pure bred labs I currently own. He was easy to train in about every respect, was a strong water dog, great upland dog, but he would never make a field trial dog. He knew the difference between training and hunting. Once trained he would run a couple drills and then could care less. Hunting he never tired of and was a cripple finding machine. Problem sometimes is they weren't my birds and I already had a limit. His big downfalls were wishing he was a coon hound, running bears, and loving a good scrap. Especially if the other dog was much larger than he was. I had to use a shock collar when hunting grouse in bear country and 25 coon in a pheasant season bought some extra shotgun shells. I would take another cross bred pup like him in a heartbeat. His last hunt December 26, 2012 he retrieved 6 big geese out of strong current. Get a lab and a springer and let me know when you have pups.
 
Rick, I'm sure you'll be happy with your lab, and it's definitely the safer choice if you primarily hunt waterfowl.

But you asked about a springers, and pinged my memory.

The Springer we had when I was a kid, Joshua, was perhaps the best water dog I ever saw. His swim "training" came at about 4 months when he chased a poorly thrown stick onto thin ice and broke through. I'd thrown the stick, and figured he was a goner. (I was about 11.) He not only survived--as soon as he reached shore he ran back out onto the ice to do it all over again. The stick was still out there--and it must be retrieved! He once chased a loon over the horizon on a 10 mile wide lake. We had to chase him down in a boat. I watched him spend the better of an hour in February trying to retrieve a lobster trap buoy that was 25 yards off the beach. He got the buoy in his mouth and wouldn't let go. I bet he did the equivalent of 2 miles of swimming in tethered circles around that pot. He used to retrieve rocks off the bottom in up to 3 feet of water. We didn't duck hunt then, so he may have missed his chance to shine.


Comments above about the coat (ask my sister about the great bubblegum caper of 1981), independent spirit, and willingness to ignore the trainer are spot on. And he'd pick a fight with anyone. I once got a call from a neighbor who complained he'd attacked her pair of dogs--a Great Dane and a BIG lab. From the sound of things after I put my father on the phone, Joshua won that fight.

But he was an awfully sweet dog, and made his last retrieve (a raquetball) on his way into the vet's office to be put down with liver tumors. He was not a favorite at the vet's--to put it mildly he was not a model patient. But even the receptionist who preferred cats and poodles cried when he scrambled under her desk after that ball.
 
best dog to hunt with is a small munsterlander they are used for feather and fir. bill
 
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