Primairly upland, i.e. pheasants, but FCM67683 is trying to corrupt me with waterfowling. He said it's a blast, but so far I haven't seen very many birds..... Right Mike?
I've had Springer Spaniels since the late '80's and tried the field trial bit for a while as well. A friend would put out birds at one of the local hunt clubs for a corporate doings once in a while, and I'd run one of the dogs. One rule of thumb was if it was a low bird,
DON'T SHOOT THE DOG! I could "hup" the dogs if they started to range out too far, or get ahead of the hunters.
One of the groups (I think there were 5 or 6 guys) that he had, put out 25 birds before lunch, and 25 after. I told him when we started that I wouldn't carry my gun, I was just there to handle the dogs. When we stopped for lunch, he told me to get my gun from the truck, the guys really wanted to take some birds home......
Another group that he had really hadn't shot over a dog before, or at least a trained dog. When the first bird was shot, 2 of the guys started going to where the bird dropped. I stopped them and sent the dog for the retrieve. Their comment was "You mean the dog retrieves too?"