The Glorious Twelfth

Today is perhaps the holiest of holy days among sportsmen and women in the UK. It is the Glorious Twelfth of August, the day the grouse shooting season opens.

Since I live in Canada, I can only participate in the event via social media. So, for the last two hours, I’ve been scrolling through Facebook and Instagram, green with envy, devouring all the Glorious Twelfth content that my British friends have been posting. As I did so, I was reminded of a part of my latest book, Pointing Dogs, Volume Two: The British and Irish Breeds, in which I describe what shooting over Pointers and Setters on the Glorious Twelfth was like when the sport was at its height of popularity, nearly 200 years ago.

These were the halcyon days of sport, when driving, battues, and mowing machines were alike unknown, and, rude as the appliances for taking game were, they afforded full play to the capabilities of a good Setter, the clever working of which gave such genuine pleasure to the sportsman. —Hugh Dalziel

The century between 1750 and 1850 marks the golden age of bird dogs in Britain and Ireland. Pointers and setters were mainly bred and kept by members of the upper crust of British society: wealthy landowners and rich sportsmen who also kept packs of hounds, greyhounds, and fighting cocks. They owned large kennels staffed by kennel men and “breakers” who did all the work, but with little recognition. 

Bob Truman, a breeder of Gordon Setters in the UK wrote:

There is the story of the guest at Holkham Hall many, many years ago, who after shooting all day over a very good dog, approached Lord Coke to compliment him on the dog and in the process enquired as to the handler’s name. “I really couldn’t say,” responded His Lordship laconically, “but I suppose we could find out for you if you really want to know.”

Men like Lord Coke, or rather his paid servants, bred great numbers of dogs and culled them ruthlessly, keeping only the best and shooting the rest. Even among the dogs they kept, many fell victim to diseases for which they had no cure. All the surviving dogs in a kennel were, by definition, the fittest, healthiest individuals possessing the greatest working abilities.

It was an era of rapid improvement, fueled by trial and error and a growing understanding of breeding principles. Dog shows, field trials, and breed clubs had not yet been established, nor had the modern idea of maintaining breed purity at all costs taken hold. More or less “pure” strains of bird dogs did exist, but only because country gentlemen rich enough to maintain kennels full of dogs were relatively isolated from each other and transportation was slow and difficult. As a result, most of their dogs were like their gamecocks and other livestock: highly inbred. Yet when an opportunity arose to “refresh” the blood in their kennel, they didn’t hesitate to use dogs of a different strain, or even a different breed. After all, back then, working dogs were judged on what they could do, not on what their registration papers claimed they could do.

During this period, it was common practice for sportsmen to purchase or rent dogs for the shooting season. While some fell victim to scam artists selling worthless dogs to eager hunters, others, like Edward Laverack, the father of the modern English Setter, were lucky enough to shoot over some of the best in the land. 

In The Highland Sportsman, Robert Hall offered the following advice about where to get a good dog.

The best way to ensure getting good dogs is to purchase them of private breeders or at the sales of well-known sportsmen’s surplus stocks, which are mostly held at Aldridge’s in St. Martin’s Lane during the early part of summer. You thereby run no risk of becoming the owner of some sorry brutes. . . . The usual charge for hiring dogs for the Scotch moors is sixteen guineas a brace for the whole season or part of the season only, the lessee paying for the keep of the dogs during the time he has them in his possession.

Perhaps the most vivid description of the period in which shooting over Pointers and setters was at its height comes from William Howitt’s The Rural Life of England, published in 1838:

Let us just note a few of the symptoms which show us that this memorable 12th of August is at hand. In the market towns you see the country sportsman hastening along the streets, paying quick visits to his gunsmith, ammunition dealer, tailor, draper, etc. He is getting all his requisites together. His dogs are at his heels. Then you see him already invested in his jacket and straw hat, driving off in his gig, phaeton, or other carriage, with keeper or companion, and perhaps a couple of dogs stowed away with him. You see the keeper and the dogcart on their way, too.

As you get northward, these signs thicken. In large towns, such as Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, [or] Edinburgh, you see keeper-like looking men, with pointers and setters for sale tied up to some palisade, or lamp-post, at the corner of a street. But woe to those who have to purchase dogs under such circumstances. It is ten to one but they are grievously gulled; or if they should chance to stumble upon a tolerable dog, there is not time for that mutual knowledge to grow up which should exist between he who on a summer ramble is smitten with a sudden desire of grouse-shooting, must however, do the best he can.

When you pass into Scotland, the signals of the time grow more conspicuous. In the newspapers, you see everywhere advertisements of Highland tracts to be let as shooting-grounds. When you get into the Highlands themselves, you find in all the inns maps of the neighboring estates, divided into shooting-grounds for letting. It is very probable that the income derived from this source by the Highland proprietors frequently far exceeds the rental of the same estates for the grazing of sheep and cattle.

The waters and the heaths seem to be the most profitable property of a great part of the Highlands. Almost every stream and loch is carefully preserved and let as a trout or salmon fishery, many of them for enormous sums; and so far is this carried, that sportsmen who are not inclined to pay eighty or a hundred pounds a year for a shooting ground complain that Ireland is the only country now for shooting in any degree of freedom. Sometimes several gentlemen join at a shooting ground; and it is a picturesque sight to see them, and their dogs and keepers, drawing towards their particular locations as the day approaches.

On the 10th of August, 1836, we sailed up the Grand Caledonian Canal from Fort William to Inverness in the steam-packet with a large party of these gentlemen. Of their number, principally military men—captains, and colonels, and men at arms; some notion may be formed from the fact that we had on board upwards of seventy dogs, mostly beautiful setters. A perfect pyramid of gun-cases was piled on the deck, and dog-carts and keepers completed the scene.

Over the course of the 19th century, the popularity of Pointers and setters rose and fell in accordance with trends and tastes of the day. In 1879, Hugh Dalzeil wrote:

That every dog has his day is one of those trite sayings that apply to many things in human experience, and the fortunes of our Setters illustrate its truth. A sporting writer, in the year 1800, says that in country towns in the North of England there were, in his day, ten Setters for one Pointer; and the North of England has the credit of having furnished the basis of our present stock. The Setter, however, during the earlier part of this century was for a time out of fashion, being pushed aside to make place for the Pointer; but now he is again in the ascendant, being certainly more generally popular than his companion servant to the gun, the Pointer. . . .

And yet, despite the fact that Pointers and setters were still extremely popular in Britain and Ireland when Dalziel wrote those words, the sun was already setting on their glory days at home.

Enjoy this post? Leave a comment. Want to learn more about Pointers and Setters? Read my new book Pointing Dogs, Volume Two: The British and Irish Breeds.