Types of Cover Dogs 
Some Interesting Notes on the Old Time Grouse Dog 
EFORE we got into the habit of 
B importing setters and pointers 
with registered pedigrees, there 
was a miscellaneous collection of bird 
dogs throughout the ruffed grouse and 
~ woodcock country, east of the Alleghany 
~ Mountains. 

For the most part sports- 
men were looking for dogs of a strain 
that were slow. But strains were scarce 
and owners were proud of their dogs 
if they had a genealogy about two or 
three generations long. If these so- 
called strains produced a dog that could 
not go fast if he would, he made bird 
dog fame for his brothers and sisters, 
regardless of their field qualities. What 
was wanted was a big slow dog. As 
for the rest, it was taken for granted. 
About this period, which was shortly 
before the Civil War, the big black and 
tan Gordon setters became the fashion. 
Some of these early black and tans were 
good to look at, but they moved with 
the strength and grace of a percheron 
horse. They would plod along in cover 
by the hour, as steady as a clock, in a 
perfectly good-natured way. Asa rule 
they were not of much help in filling 
the game bag. The big, sluggish, 
double-nosed Spanish pointer was an- 
other favorite of that period. He was 
slow enough to suit the most particular 
ruffed grouse 
hunter, but he 
lacked the bird 
dog cunning 
needed in a 
tuffed grouse 
dog. These two 
varieties of bird 
dogs were more 
or less popular 
in New Eng- 
land for a num- 
ber of years. In 
spite of their 
virtue of being 
slow, they did 
not satisfy the 
sportsmen’s 
wants. 
Around about 
New York City, 
sportsmen talk- 
ed as freely 
about speed as 
up state or New 
England hunt- 
ers talked of the 
virtues of a slow 
dog, The New 
By C. B. WHITFORD 
Yorker was a snipe shooter. Pace on 
the Long Island or Jersey meadows was 
a desideratum and so the New Yorker 
liked to see his dog stretch himself on 
the snipe meadows, or the compara- 
tively open quail country of the near 
south and west. He might spend one 
month of the year afield, but he had 
eleven months left to talk about the 
awful pace at which his dog hunted 
birds. The Boston or Providence or 
Hartford sportsmen would at the same 
time be telling each other how delight- 
fully slow their dogs were. 
ND so it happened that what was 
a crack bird dog in New York City 
was of no account in the mind of the 
New England sportsmen, and it further 
happened that New York dogs with a 
reputation that pleased New Yorkers 
found their way into New England 
where they proved unsatisfactory. The 
red setter of that period was very pop- 
ular in New York, and there were some 
really good ones of this variety in New 
York at that time. But when they were 
taken to New England on their New 
York reputation, they proved in the 
New England jungles to be another 
type that failed. Without a fairly well 
defined breed or strain of dogs that 

A Setter in the field. 
were adapted by nature to work on 
ruffed grouse and woodcock, the New 
England sportsmen and others who shot 
much in cover were forced to make the 
best of whatever came to hand in the 
way of setter or pointer. 
EANWHILE there was a group of 
ruffed grouse and woodcock dogs 
in the making at Pomfret and Packer- 
ville, Conn. These dogs not bred by 
any fixed rule were coming to be typical 
and suited by nature to the work re- 
quired of a cover dog. They were bred 
by Ethan Allen from a female imported 
by Daniel Webster, and an exception- 
ally fine setter owned by Captain 
Stephen Packer, of Packerville. 
At the time the Civil War broke out 
these dogs had been bred to the cover 
shooting, ideal for some dozen years or 
more, and when the war was over they 
had become quite typical. So much so 
that a good judge of setters would be 
likely to suspect the strain to which 
one of these dogs belonged, as soon as 
he had laid eyes on him. Their reputa- 
tion for cover work was so well known 
at this period throughout New England, 
that they soon grew to be the largest 
single group of setters ever known in 
this country up to that time. And they 
remained the 
popular New 
England _ setter 
up to about 
1875, at which 
time the new 
pedigreed _ set- 
ters like the 
Laveracks, Lle- 
wellin and Mac- 
Donna dogs, 
were becoming 
the setter rage. 
In a remarkable 
short time the 
Allen setters, 
known as Web- 
ster setters, van- 
ished from the 
face of the 
earth. Since 
that time we 
have not had a 
particular group 
of setters suited 
to the rough 
cover - shooting 
in New England, 
(Cont. on p. 430) 
393 
