10 Traits of Top Shooting Pickers-Up

On any shoot, large or small, there will be working dogs to gather the fallen and wounded game.

The pickers-up are a central part of any shoot, and on a commercial shoot where income is calculated per bird a good picker-up can make a real difference to the economics of the day. So what are the characteristics of a good picker-up?

Read the full article: Ten Traits of Top Shooting Pickers-Up

Gundogs from good working stock
Without exception the best pickers-up have dogs specifically bred for shooting. The breed is far less important than the fact that they were born to hunt and retrieve. I like to work a spaniel and a retriever  - each has their strengths but both are more than capable of doing all that is required of a working gundog. A puppy from the best lines can be expensive but you cannot make a purse from a sow’s ear. Good working dogs will be natural hunters, extremely biddable, and will also have soft mouths: there's not much point in working hard to find a lost pheasant only to be handed a mangled inedible corpse.

Properly trained gundogs
You can spot the dogs of a good picker-up in the car park even before the day has begun. They will be under control, either sitting patiently in the back of the car or at heel, or possibly on leads. They will not be running riot with the rest of the pack! The dogs do not have to be trained to the level of circus performers but it is essential that they will stop and come to heel as soon as they are called, and that they do what their handler wants rather than what suits them. The ability to work to hand signals can be extremely useful, but the important skills of hunting and marking can only really be learnt by a dog on the job.

No shouting
It seems the more a dog handler shouts the less his dogs do as he wishes. Excessive noise can ruin a drive and there should be no need to shout at a dog. A good picker-up will control his dogs with a quiet word and a whistle: there will be no need to shout because his dogs will always be under control.

Always watching the birds
At the end of the drive, even a busy one, a good picker-up will know how many birds he has to pick and how many are likely to be runners. He will have marked those birds that were pricked by a single pellet and flown on, if possible watching them till they are out of sight or down. Experience has taught him which birds he needs to go for first and which can wait. He will also know which birds on his patch have been poached by some else's dog!

Know which ground to leave untouched
Even if the picker-up returns triumphant with his pricked bird, the gamekeeper will be less than enthusiastic if in doing so the picker-up has hunted out the majority of the next drive. The good picker-up always knows where the next drive is and where he can and cannot go. Even if you are familiar with the ground do not take it for granted: the order of drives often gets changed at short notice in light of how the day is going.

Go the extra mile
Having seen a wounded bird fly on and pitch-in on the other side of the valley the conscientious picker-up will happily walk that half mile to make the retrieve. There is nothing more satisfying than to mark a distant bird, find the right bit of cover, put your dogs in and have them come out with the bird. This sort of retrieve is far more valuable than simply collecting half a dozen pheasants from the middle of a grass field and really sets the top picker-up apart.

Quality not quantity
A good picker-up knows it is far more important to make a few good retrieves where otherwise the birds would have been lost than to gather dozens of birds which could just as easily have been picked by hand. The picker-up returning to the game cart within minutes of the end of a drive groaning under the weight of dozens of pheasants is not necessarily as good as the person who emerges from a distant hedge 10 minutes later carrying only two or three.

Pick the runners as soon as possible
Even the best pickers-up will have had the experience of having a runner fall right by them but which nevertheless got away. Seconds really do count: a wounded pheasant can cover a lot of ground in just a few minutes and needs picking as soon as possible. Waiting until the end of the drive is asking the failure, and if you have a number of runners down at the same time you are very unlikely to pick them all.

Stand farther back
It is vital that the picker-up, and his dogs, can see everything that is going on. This is far easier to do when standing further back from the Guns. Pickers-up standing farther back will be far better placed to pick those wounded birds that fly on, while those birds that fall dead close to the Guns can be picked at any time.

Respect the Guns wishing to work their own dogs
Oft times a standing Gun will turn up at his peg with a dog at heel. And often as not they would like Fido to make a retrieve or two at the end of the drive. If at all possible they should be indulged. But it is an indulgence. On a driven shoot the Gun's number-one responsibility is to shoot, and the picker-up’s responsibility is to ensure that every bird is retrieved. The Gun may well be paying for his sport but there is a higher duty to the game and letting wounded pheasants get away so that Fido can have a romp is not acceptable: the conscientious picker-up will avoid it if possible.

These observations are based on 40 years experience in the shooting field. What do you think? Let us know.