Irish setter on the cover of a magazine

[Henk ten Klooster]

An Irish setter is on the cover of the French magazine ‘Le chasseur de Becasse’ July/August issue. It features the article ‘Le setter irlandais "fighting spirit" dans le marais’ written by Alain Damperat.

On four pages with seven pictures the working Irish setter is highlighted, focusing on Moanruad Irish setters and their breeder John Nash. The John Nash trophy is for the best Irish setter working on snipes (French: becassines).

Two French breeders/trialers who work on snipes are portrayed in the article, Bernard Trubuilt from Glomel, Brittanny and Jean-Francois Meret from Fougeres.

[Carmel Murphy]

Lovely photo!! Henk can you explain the bell around the setters neck? Thanks!!

[Henk ten Klooster]

In dense terrains where you cannot SEE the point of your birddog, bells help to let you HEAR a point. It rings a bell for the hunter when the bell does not ring anymore:-))

Snipes live a very secretive life and prefer areas where you can hardly see them. Searching, finding, pointing and blocking snipes requires high quality bird dogs, very tough and excellent nose.

The working Irish setter in France descending from Irish Moanruad lineage is often better in this field than the very popular working English setter and pointer and even the homebred Brittanny.

Thats why some French experts call the red setter the King of Snipehunting.

Hopefully this explanation helps to understand the use of the bell, Carmel. It is based on information from hunters and trialers abroad, as I do not know of any hunter here (Netherlands) using a bell.

[Carmel Murphy]

Thanks for that Henk! Thats a piece of info on hunting that I had never heard of before!! Very good!;o)

[Susan Stone]

Thanks for sharing, Henk. The bell is used here in Switzerland also by the few hunters who have snipe in their hunting area. There is actually a trial on snipe in October I think, arranged by the Swiss Setter & Pointer Club but run in Levier, France.

[Henk ten Klooster]

A pleasure to read your interest, snipe and Irish setter is telling a story in my eyes depicting a university for red setter fanciers.

Raymond O'Dwyer had a section on snipe in his book The Irish Red Setter (pp 190) telling it requires a dog "with stamina, a hardy constitution to withstand the elements, good game handling abilities and a somewhat cautious nature". He calls the Irish setter "one of the better snipe dogs the world over". The presence of snipe has in his eyes even to do with the state of the moon and prevailing wheather conditions.

There is a lot more on snipe - it requires a bird dog without the fault of false pointing and stickiness and in this Irish working setters seem to beat most other breeds.

Carmels reaction on bells tells about the (history of) landscape in Ireland. That is open without densely wooded areas. You do not need bells over there.

As for "hunting", Irish setters and other bird dogs play an important role in "hunting for life". That is abilities of a bird dog are used in protection schemes. Counting is important in those schemes and that is best done with bird dogs.

An ability to search, find, point and block snipe seems to disappear in bird dogs in cultures where they are no longer on the list of feathers to be hunted like the Netherlands.

Some of the snipe connaisseurs from France are stunning experts. I remember a talk with Meret in France when we were discussing lack of terrains to train bird dogs in the Netherlands. That is when he pointed out, where you can best train your setter on snipe, for about a few tens of kilometers of the place where one of the Dutchmen was living:-)))

[Marc Ruymbeke]

Very nice pictrue and nice dog on the cover, excellent publisity for the breed,

[Henk ten Klooster]

Right excellent publicity Marc, Seeing this magazine as the first holiday experience in Brittanny week was great. And while reading it on a terrace, there was a concert of Celtic Legends for free!!! So double fun.

[Susan Stone]

I am always a bit confused when it comes to translating the french 'bécasse' and the 'bécassine' into either german or english. Look at this interesting site 'Bird Collection' I think the bécasse is a Woodock (german Waldschnepfe) and the bécassine is Common Snipe (german Bekassine).

[Henk ten Klooster]

Yes very confusing. The Dutch word for both is more logical: houtsnip (scolopax rusticola; E: woodcock; G: Waldschnepfe; F: Becasse des bois; S: Morkulla) and watersnip (gallinago gallinago; E: common snipe; G: Bekassine; F: Becasse des marais; S:Enkelbeckasin).

Thanks for the link! My favorite is Pedersens birdguide.

Correction on use of the bell in Ireland, according to Raymond O'Dwyer in his book The Irish Red Setter (pp 194,195) the bell is used in the Emerald Isle for woodcock and an electronic bleeper that sounds when the dog is motionless. But spaniels have taken over this job over there because of the new Sitka spruce plantations together with the profusion of briars and brambles, he notes.

Interestingly O'Dwyer notes of common snipe, " that setters trained on them will handle any game bird, but the reverse is not necessarily true" (pp 193). That may be of interest for people lacking partridge to train on.