This is kinda like agonizing over Chevy vs Ford...
If you want a retriever, Labs or Chesapeakes will do fine if you get a good one and it’s trained right. Any dog, no matter the breeding, can turn out bad (not a good hunter, etc), but odds are much better from a proven line/kennel.
For a pet, I’d rather have a lab personally (I’ve had both). More “friendly” in general, coats don’t stink like Chessies do, and easier to train in my experience. My dogs all came out of successful field trial lines. I would say they were harder to train on average, but much higher energy and drive than “hunting” dogs - still very capable of hunting but needed to be trained properly. You can train a high energy dog to be obedient, but you can’t train energy or drive into a dog that doesn’t have it! My last lab was an awesome dog, would love to have another like him someday!
Also, I’ve hunted Kansas CRP lands with buddies for pheasant many years, and we always used labs. My dad has some excellent English pointers, but, while really fun to watch work, I prefer to hunt over retrievers myself. Some folks don’t have a preference, but some are just retriever people and some are pointer people - to each their own. The hunting part is, for most, a very small part of having a dog!
