Welcome to the true, original and genuine Fenlander Gundogs,Trade Mark Registered. This website is set to introduce and document the history, development and concept behind the evolution of this style of versatile working dog. Primarily this style of dog was developed to fill a shortfall in useful breeding stock of the large English Springer Spaniel (ESS) due to the excessive use of the diminutive field trial style working ESS. It was soon apparent that with the first crossings that my excellent original Springer line were improved in scenting and working abilities. Henceforth a breeding project has progressed since 2001, culminating in a blending of my Springer line with the carefully selected Weimaraner blood and later excellent working English Pointer blood, and more recently Brittany for the bobtail gene and last Korthols Griffon/German wire hair for the coat. Other breeds and lines such as English Setters, Braque d'auvergne have been tried but proved unsuitable outcrosses. The most working instinctive dogs have been selected and bred back into the original Fenlander line to optimise trainablity, drive, energy and instinct with a loveable friendly disposition. The direction is for a smallish HPR up to 23in, tall enough to be seen and work in tall root crops without excessive jumping, that quarters fairly close within gunshot range, points, jump/swim across dykes and drains for retrieves, enter heavy cover, sit quietly at peg or in hide. I am confident now to offer them to the shooting and hawking folk which are taking much interest recently as an worthy alternative to other HPRs. There is another offshoot breeding program the Fen Spaniel line, with carefully selected English Springer blood a smaller wirehaired dog of predominately Springer blood for beating and rough shooting.
It has always been my hope that every Fenlander that I breed should enter an active working life, that said they also prove to make excellent family pets albeit needing plenty of stimulation and exercise.
Edward Carlile, October 2024
MY BEGINNING
At the age of about eleven I had been taken out shooting several times as an observer and game carrier. Most of the time with my older brothers, I was quite happy and proud to be out hunting with the men. I say men; they were nine years and eight years older, but to me they were adults who went to work and could go shooting unaccompanied with their own guns! We had a few farmers’ lands to shoot over, our tree nurseries and a few bits we sort of had permission to go through when no one else was shooting.
It was when my father and brothers hired the shooting on three hundred acres of farmland sandwiched between two shoots in Attleborough that I had a gun put in my hands. A German side by side twenty bore non ejector that was nearly as tall as me even with the stock shortened to about twelve inches. I’d have been happy with a four-ten or even a garden gun, so a gun, nearly as big as the men’s twelves was top of the world!
The first morning I was just allowed to walk around with the gun unloaded and told to pretend to shoot. It was a bit hard work as the gun was barrel heavy and long so kept digging in the mud, which I was scolded for. Then to my surprise in the afternoon a hen pheasant ran into a dyke further ahead of us and it was quickly decided to put a cartridge in my gun and give me a shot!
Now I’d never fired a gun other than a few poor cack-handed attempts with my brother’s air rifle. As I’d find typical of his attitude later in life from our father, he gave a quick vague depiction of aiming and shooting which I didn’t grasp. Fortunately my older brothers Gerard and Julian were quick to instruct me with a very useful system ‘follow the bird from behind: tail, bum, beak bang!
Well Flash our English Springer bitch was entered into the dyke, the hen flushed left to right, I followed and drew through the bird and pulled the trigger. At thirty-five to forty yards the hen crumpled stone dead! I turned to them and asked `Is that right?’ and they shut their dropped jaws to exclaim their disbelief with words I wasn’t allowed to say or had heard I reckon at that age!
For the rest of the day and next couple of outings I had a cartridge in the right barrel and shot by instinct killing them at twenty-five to thirty yards, regularly bagging three or four an outing, rarely missing. That winter we shot every Saturday at Attleborough and one outing we bagged around sixty birds between six of us, mainly cocks as we had a code to leave most hens for breeders, I had eight to my gun!
I pined and longed to be out with the gun the next season, but I was in boarding school till the holidays. By the time I was out my eyes had deteriorated enough that I had to be up the front of the classroom to read the board. Now wearing glasses for mild short-sightedness I struggled to adjust. For I had had good vision up until then and now with glasses that got in the way, got mucky, wet, steamed up, had no peripheral vision… meaning I had to move my head a lot more rather than my eyes, my shooting suffered a fair bit but I got around it. Incidentally after the third year we lost the shooting at Attleborough due to the two shoots out-bidding us. As to be expected they weren’t happy that we were shooting all their released birds! By the end of the season there would be gangs of hen pheasant, fifty strong, as we only shot the cocks!