Will the springer ever bounce back?

In the 1980s I belonged to a shooting syndicate with one simple rule: every member had to own a working gundog. It was a walk-one, stand-one shoot, so it was a practical ruling. There was no suggestion as to what sort of dog it had to be, but every member happened to own at least one English springer and I can recall shooting days when we had 15 or 16 springers out. At the time I thought little about it, because the English springer was then by far our most popular breed of shooting dog, at least for this type of shooting.

Little did I guess then that the springer had probably reached the peak of its popularity. Peter Moxon, gundog correspondent of for 40 years, believed that springers were the ideal rough shooter’s dog, as they are “natural hunters and retrievers, love