Originally Posted by Natty_Bumpo
[quote=Centurion75]
Quote

Thank you for the suggestions. Out of curiosity, why would you not recommend the Clumber? I can find very little first hand experience of them.

Thank you


I will answer based on my experience at a RGS fun trial here in TC a few years ago. Its basically a "meet and greet" event to promote RGS and build support for the local chapter. In the flushing dog class I had my brace of FBECS entered plus a couple Springers, a Golden, a bunch of labs, a AWS and two Clumber spaniels. I had never seen one in the field before. The Clumbers were 50-60 pounds each, longish body, short legs, HUGE long and thick coat, and droopy eye lids which would collect copious amounts of debris in the woods/ fields.The birds were good flying chuckers salted down the fields.


My Rocky, who was around 2 yo at the time, was braced with one of the Clumbers. Rocky took off like a rocket and cleaned the field of birds except for one which the other guy walked up and shot and Rocky promptly retrieved to me. The Clumber was s*l*o*w*, painfully slow, snuffling along with his head on the ground and never got 50' from his master for the entire half hour.It was like watching a glacier move. Literally!! The other Clumber moved down the bird field exactly the same way. Rocky took second.

I suppose that if a guy had severe arthritis in both knees and had to use a cane to walk in the grouse woods, a Clumber spaniel might be a good fit for his grouse gunning???

Hope this helps.

NB





Thank you for replying, This is very helpful information. I consider myself a slower walker but it sounds like the Clumber may be a little too slow for me. I also have concerns about the droopy eyes with the type of woods I hunt in Northern Maine. Much of times I end up in woods so thick it is difficult to get a swing on a flushed grouse without hitting tree branches with my barrels, I imagine that type of terrain would not only be difficult for that breed but probably pretty bad for their eyes.

The breed is very interesting to me but I think maybe I will keep on looking around and gathering information for now. Thank you