The perfect dog for partridges
As every self-respecting reader of The Field knows, a dog is not for Christmas. Rather, it is for retrieving, pointing or flushing out game. At the very minimum, it should be able to keep us company while out on a stroll or sheltering from the heavens in the elderly, short-wheelbase Land Rover.
As the first of this season’s partridges appear on the sportsman’s horizon, there is a pressing question that needs to be answered: which dog? Which is the gundog of choice, the one that leaves all others panting in shade when Perdix perdix – or, indeed, Alectoris rufa – hove into view?
To find out, I turn my address book to its final page and pick up the phone to Nick Zoll, founder and manager of a syndicate operating a 2,500-acre shoot on the Holkham Estate at Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk, celebrated for its pre-eminence in wild English partridges. If Zoll doesn’t know the right dog for the partridge, no one will.
He begins by noting that if one were walking-up partridges over green stubbles in September, as they did in
