I HAVE a friend who keeps a meticulous record of all the birds his dogs – three labradors and a springer – pick up each season. (He keeps a clicker in his pocket to record the daily tally.) He works on two commercial shoots and generally picks up five days a fortnight throughout the pheasant season. Last season his tally was a whopping 2,355 pheasants. Impressive though this is, I’m sure there are a number of pickers-up whose dogs retrieve more.
I asked him whether his dogs
