Hunters who use spaniels vary in the degree to which they demand their dogs be steady to the shot and fall, but no matter their degree of finish, flushing dogs make enthusiastic retrievers of any bird shot. Photo by Pamela O. Kadlec.

The dog is in hunt mode: His head is down -- not quite like a bloodhound seeking a trail but low enough to capture the scent coming off the field grasses -- and he is moving in a zigzag pattern about 10 yards in front of the guns with a steady motion back and forth, cutting 30-yard swaths on each side through the cover. The dog whips around and his tail starts wagging faster than windshield wipers in a Florida downpour. He’s on the scent of a quail, your heart starts beating faster in response to the excited spaniel, and the gun is raised as the dog busts into the cover and pushes the bird into the air.

If you’ve never hunted upland game behind a spaniel, you are missing a lot of fun. There is challenge working behind a flushing dog, because you have to be ready to shoot quickly when the hard-charging spaniel forces the birds into the air. This is not the kind of upland hunting where you walk up and kick the cover to make the bird flush. If the bird is too slow, he may end up being caught by the dog flying up in his wake. Watching a young dog figure out how to work the wind and cover, all while staying in gun range, is like watching a kind of poetry in motion.

Different breeds of spaniels have different methods of quartering and flushing game. Generally, Boykin spaniels, cocker and springer spaniels are very bold flushers who will sometimes catch the bird in midair. American water spaniels, Clumber and Sussex spaniels are more methodical and often have a softer flush. Some spaniels actually stalk and circle the birds rather than charge in. Whichever spaniel you choose to own, they are all a joy to hunt with when taught to work close to the gun.

The best part of all of this is that most spaniels quarter naturally. Your job is to teach pups to stay in gun range while hunting their quarry.

Training a more finished dog -- a pup that is steady to the gun, hupping where the flush took place -- is the typically the most difficult part of training. Most “meat” hunters, however, aren’t worried about that. Their reasoning is that if the bird is crippled and flies a long way off, the dog can be chasing all along and has a better chance of recovering the game. I personally prefer the dog to be under control, steady to both flush and shot because it means less yelling to bring the dog back, less chance he will flush other birds out of gun range, and less chance that he’ll accidentally get shot.

Let’s look at some of the fundamentals of training a flushing dog for work in the field.

INTRODUCTION TO THE GUN
Introduce a pup to the gun in a way that will cause the pup to relate bang to bird and you won’t have any problems. You must introduce the pup to gunfire carefully. A birdy pup won’t do you much good if he bolts at the blast of a shotgun.