Looking for advice that will improve your dog’s picking-up? Bill Meldrum, former gundog trainer to HM The Queen, has all the answers.
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By Bill Meldrum
Friday, 27 January 2012
Picking-up: Former gundog trainer to HM The Queen shares his picking-up rules.
It’s 61 years since I first went picking-up as a gamekeeper with a brilliant game-finding bitch. One day I was hunting rabbits with her, the next picking-up on shoots. I learned a lot from her. Picking-up should be a team effort but it’s best if one person is in charge. These days I only pick-up on one shoot where there are six of us: we get our orders from the keeper in the morning and then the picker-up in charge tells us our positions for each drive. We work in pairs and keep well back from the guns during the drive; then two of us sweep up where the guns have stood. It seems to work well and we all enjoy our day.
Shoot memories
In my late 20s I worked for a boss who had his own personal loader and picker-up. We travelled the UK, from northern Scotland to southern England, and the only days during the season when he did not shoot were when travelling from one far-flung estate to the next. I had to keep at least 22 dogs trained and would bring on at up to five young dogs during summer to replace those retiring.
In my experience, some shoots are well organised, while at others it’s each man for himself. Some pickers-up at estates I visited with my boss were resentful of my being there, while others made me hugely welcome. As the years went by and we visited these estates every year, I soon found my way around and made many friends.
At one Kent estate, a husband and wife picking-up team stayed close to the gun line, retrieving birds as they fell. They would put what they had picked up in their Land Rover instead of handing them to the game cart. At lunchtime they would wait until the host and his guns arrived (the game larder was next to the lunch hut) and then start unloading about 100 birds, making sure everyone saw them. The other two pickers-up – good, honest men – said the same thing happened every time and the estate owner thought they were great pickers-up. On the way home, my boss said what fine pickers-up they were. I put him right. A few years later a new headkeeper arrived: he told his boss what they did and they were never seen on that shoot again.
Remember, dogs are there to find birds that you can’t pick up by hand.
Always tell the truth
At another shoot there were 10 pickers-up. I was loading this time and thought the picking-up was plain bad. During one memorable day, the gentleman for whom I was loading had a dog and asked the pickers-up to leave a bird or two for him. Two of his birds fell injured into a rhododendron bush 200 yards away, so he invited a picker-up to look for them; the picker-up in question never even tried but told the gun he’d found them.
Another day I was loading for a chap who turned out to be a poor shot. On the first three drives he killed one bird. An energetic picker-up asked whether the gun had any birds to pick up. The gun said he had hit three lightly and they’d fallen into a wood 200 yards away but it wasn’t worthwhile going to look for them (the truth was they were not hit). However, the picker-up was so eager that he said he’d look for them. When he set off, the gun said he felt awful for sending him off on a wild goose chase. On the next drive, the picker-up came past and said: “Sir, I picked your birds out of the wood.”
Another gun I recall would say he’d downed 17, so you’d pick up 17 and then he’d say he still had one here, or one there. We soon learned to steer clear of him because he would keep you hunting round his butt all day!
Bill Meldrum’s golden rules for picking-up
Someone should write a rulebook for pickers-up. There are quite a few systems but for me the golden rules are teamwork and to never tell lies because you are soon found out. Another bad fault is picking-up in the gun line during the drive and immediately after it. Most guns like to pick up their own birds even if they don’t have a dog with them. Remember that dogs are there to find birds you can’t pick-up by hand.
In addition to those, listed here are the rules that I learnt from an old headkeeper when picking-up in my early days. It’s worth noting that in my experience, 95 per cent of pickers-up do a good job.
1. Don’t go into the gun line unless you see a gun without a dog looking for birds, and then leave at least two of your team behind.
2. Try to get as far back from the gun line as you can – around 300 metres is a safe distance.
3. Remember that as a picker-up you’re there to do a job; the guns are there to enjoy themselves.
4. If you leave a drive for an hour or two and then return, you will often be surprised by the number of birds you pick up, especially grouse and partridge.
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