Golden Ticket

These dogs can hunt

From our May/June 2025 issue

Is there a breed more universally beloved than the golden retriever? Goldens are a moveable feast of sunshine: parting the clouds, letting in the light, unfailingly lifting the spirits of whomever they happen to meet. They exert a happy gravity that draws you—or maybe charms you—into their orbit; if you are down in the dumps, once a golden retriever cuts your track you won’t stay that way for long. There’s nothing like a golden retriever to chase away the blues.

Some goldens are as boisterously exuberant as kids getting out of school; some have the perpetually bemused, faintly mischievous air of the sly aunt or uncle who slipped you candy when your parents weren’t looking; some, a bit more serene, exude a sense of warmly empathetic kindness. But they all share this: a beaming smile—a smile that announces an infectiously winning personality. Spend time with a golden retriever, and you’ll soon be smiling too.

Goldens aren't just eye candy; they can handle just about any flushing or retrieving task on land or in water. Photo by Mark Atwater.

That the golden retriever is beautiful goes without saying. Classically proportioned, not so big as to be intimidating but not so small as to seem unimportant, with intelligent eyes, strong features and that gloriously lustrous coat from which the breed gets its name, the golden is something like the Platonic ideal of “dogness.” This is a dog you not only notice, but one you also admire.

All the more ironic, then, that as the golden retriever has become an iconic presence on the cultural landscape, symbolic of prosperity and well-being, its original purpose has been obscured—if not completely lost sight of. Simply put: It’s hard for people who aren’t in the know to imagine this uber-attractive family pet getting its coat muddy and doing actual work. This was brought home to me recently when I mentioned to a friend—a woman who doesn’t come from a hunting background—that I was working on this story. She looked at me perplexedly and said, “But golden retrievers aren’t really hunting dogs, are they?”

Goldens arrived in the US as retrievers of upland game; it wasn't until later that their abilities as water dogs were recognized. Photo by Mark Atwater.

Even among sportsmen, it’s widely assumed that while a golden might be an acceptable dog for a “weekend warrior” who gets out a handful of times a season (read: a guy whose bar is set pretty low), it’s not a dog likely to satisfy the needs of a serious hunter of upland birds and/or waterfowl. This is stuff and nonsense, as the Brits would say. In point of fact, a golden retriever from proven field bloodlines, properly trained, can handle virtually any flushing or retrieving assignment required of it, on land or in water, and handle it with style. It’s instructive that the authors of the Encyclopedia of North American Sporting Dogs recognized this disconnect between the golden as perceived and the golden in reality, calling the breed’s hunting prowess “underestimated by those who are used to other breeds.”

Bottom line? This dog hunts.

But then, it always has. The golden retriever, for all intents and purposes, is the creation of a single man: Sir Dudley Marjoribanks, the first Lord Tweedmouth. A keen sportsman whose estate, Guisachan, lay near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands, Lord Tweedmouth kept detailed records of his breeding program. In 1865 he acquired a male wavy-coated retriever named Nous—a yellow “sport” that had shown up in an otherwise all-black litter. (The wavy-coated retriever soon evolved into the flat-coated retriever.) Nous proved to be a fine hunting dog, brainy and capable, and in 1868 Lord Tweedmouth bred him to a Tweed water spaniel—a Scottish breed, since vanished, that was well-regarded at the time.

This breeding produced four yellow females. Lord Tweedmouth kept three, and this triumvirate became the foundation for the golden retriever as we know it today. Like a chef fine-tuning a recipe, over the years he added a dash of Irish setter, a dollop of bloodhound, a few more sprinkles of wavy-coated retriever and Tweed water spaniel, and even a drop of Labrador retriever, keeping only the yellow puppies until his strain bred “true.”

A curious twist in the golden’s story is that Lord Tweedmouth’s records didn’t come to light until 1952 (he died in 1894). And in the absence of more credible information, some forgotten scribe with an overactive imagination successfully peddled the tale that the breed was descended from “Russian circus dogs” that Lord Tweedmouth had obtained on a trip to Brighton, England, in 1860. This was pure hokum—and yet it became the accepted narrative. Virtually every account of the golden retriever written prior to the discovery of Lord Tweedmouth’s studbooks repeats the “Russian circus dog” fable.

Photo by Mark Atwater.

In the early years of the 20th Century, goldens were considered a yellow variant of the flat-coated retriever and registered as such. Then in 1913 The Kennel Club of Great Britain recognized the golden as a separate breed, calling it the “golden or yellow retriever.” In 1920 the “yellow” appellation was dropped, and the official name became simply golden retriever. The American Kennel Club recognized the golden exactly 100 years ago, with the first registration occurring in November 1925.

The early importers of the golden, like the early importers of the Lab, were wealthy Eastern sportsmen. Impressed by the dogs they’d seen at shooting parties in the British Isles, where both goldens and Labs were used primarily as non-slip “pick-up” dogs for pheasants, partridge and red grouse, they sought to recreate that ambiance on their own estates in places like Long Island and the Hudson River Valley.

For whatever reasons, though, the majority of the tycoons responsible for those first importations—the Fields, Morgans, Harrimans, Guggenheims, Belmonts and so on—gravitated to the Lab. (It might have been a matter of availability.) It wasn’t until the mid-1930s that the golden had an appreciable presence here, and its stronghold wasn’t the East Coast but the Midwest.

Minnesota, in particular, became a golden retriever hotbed. One of the breed’s foremost promoters, Ralph Boalt, established his Stilrovin Kennels—a legendary name in golden retriever circles—in Winona, on the Mississippi River; his gift of a pup to a local kid named Billy Wunderlich, in turn, started Wunderlich on his path to a Hall of Fame career as a professional trainer. Within a couple years of graduating high school, Wunderlich, advertising himself as a “golden specialist,” had hung out his shingle as a pro. In 1951 he handled a golden named Ready Always of Marianhill to the National Retriever Championship—the last golden, ever, to win that coveted title.

Another Minnesota sportsman, Dr. L.M. Evans of Sauk Rapids, owned two National Champion goldens: Sheltercove Beauty (1944) and Beautywood’s Tamarack (1950). Both were handled by Charles Morgan of Random Lake, Wisconsin—a revered figure on the American retriever scene. In his classic book, Charles Morgan on Retrievers, Morgan recalled that it was Tamarack’s willingness to enter icy water that ultimately propelled him to his National Championship triumph. Wrote Morgan: “His courage and determination paid off under the most adverse conditions. He not only went where more timid souls would hardly tread, but he flew into the icy water and came out with tail high, ready to go again . . . . I think he won because he had more guts than any dog running.”

Funny, that doesn’t sound like the description of a part-time hunter to me . . . .

We need to back up here, briefly, and note that when the golden was brought to these shores, it was as a retriever of upland game. Ditto the Lab. It was only later—first because of the popularity of retriever field trials (where they had to compete against Chesapeakes, the acknowledged kings of the water), and then when they began to filter into the hands of “ordinary” hunters—that their abilities as water dogs were recognized, refined by training and harnessed to the waterfowler’s advantage.

These breeds also found a niche as upland flushing dogs, especially on pheasants—a bird that could be a diabolically tough customer for a pointing dog. While it seems likely that they were occasionally used for a spot of “rough shooting” by their cohort in Great Britain, it was definitely a side hustle. Only in America was the full range of their capabilities revealed. Whatever environment or situation they were put in, they adapted and excelled.

Photo by Mark Atwater.

And while the Lab gradually eclipsed the golden as the dominant force in retriever field trials, this had nothing whatsoever to do with the golden’s hunting/retrieving ability. It had everything to do, on the other hand, with the increasingly specialized nature of the game and with the kind of rote, high-pressure training required to be successful at it. Simply put, Labs typically respond to this kind of training better than goldens do. Professional trainers often explain the difference in terms of Labs being “doers” and goldens being “thinkers”—although it seems to me that in a real-world hunting situation, having a dog that’s capable of sizing up a difficult situation and solving problems on the fly is a pretty desirable scenario.

What has happened to the golden retriever during the past half-century or so is that a distinct split—a schism, if you will—has developed between show/pet lines and field lines. It’s almost as if they’re two different breeds; about the only common denominator is that sunny, archetypally “golden” personality. It’s all-important, then, that if you’re looking for a golden retriever capable of performing at a high level as a hunter, you need to focus your search on breeders who are exclusively “field-focused.” 

As a rule, field-bred goldens are smaller, leaner, darker-coated, lighter-boned and far less heavily coated than their cousins on the show/pet side. They’re also visibly bouncier and more athletic. You know those massive, pure-white, extravagantly furry goldens you see everywhere these days—the ones that resemble horizontal snowmen? Not them.

“The saying I use all the time is ‘Redder is better,’” said Mark Atwater, the photographer from Georgia who’s one of the best-known “golden guys” in the country. “Some lines of field goldens have more of a honey-blonde coat, but when you see a golden with a coat that shades toward red, you can be pretty sure there’s field blood close to the surface.”

He added, “We call it a ‘wash-and-wear’ coat. My goldens come out of the water, shake three times, roll in the grass and they’re almost dry. Will a golden’s coat pick up burrs? Sure, but it’s not as bad as you might think. And they generally do a good job of maintaining their coats themselves.” (Pro tip: Spray your golden pre-hunt with a product such as Cowboy Magic or Show Sheen, brush it in, and any burrs the dog collects will pull right out.)

Still, the quality that most conspicuously distinguishes good field goldens, in Atwater’s estimation, is their athleticism. “They’re wildly athletic,” he said. “They can run, they can jump, they’re agile enough to get over any kind of terrain. [Author’s note: Some goldens can even climb trees!] They hit the water like a cannonball too. 

“Plus,” he said, “they’re smart. They come out of the womb looking for human eyes to make contact with. They want to be with people, and they’re so trainable. Whatever job you give them, they want to do it. Their attitude is Let’s go to work.”

On the subject of training, Atwater said, “The thing about goldens—and I think this makes them different from Labs—is that they want to know why. You have to be consistent, and you have to be fair. If you break a golden’s trust, you can have a hard time getting it back. You can’t plow through confusion by applying more force. That might work with a Lab, but not with a golden. With a golden, that just makes things worse.”

Joe Wondergem, who since 1990 has been breeding fine hunting goldens at his kennel, Sporting Gold Retrievers, in northeastern Wisconsin, echoes this. “My training philosophy is to use a lot of teaching, a lot of showing, a lot of repetition and lighter pressure,” Wondergem said. “My experience has been that once a golden learns something, it’s there to stay. Their retention is unbelievable.

“They’re very attentive dogs too. They learn a lot just by being around you. They’re great pets and companions—and in the fall they’re absolute machines, whether you’re hunting waterfowl or upland birds. They’re superb markers, they’re not bothered by the cold and they have exceptional noses. In the hunt-test world you’ll hear people talk about ‘The Golden Nose,’ even claiming that it’s better than a Lab’s. I don’t know about that, but I’ve seen goldens do some things that are pretty amazing. You’ll think, There’s no way they could have smelled that bird, but the way they reacted tells you they did.”

Atwater, for his part, has no reluctance on this score. “Goldens’ noses are wildly superior to most Labs’,” he said. “It’s not even close. This can work against them in competition, but in the uplands or when you drop a duck in heavy cover, it gives you a ton of confidence. You know you’ve got the right dog for the job.”

For a final thought we turn to Erica Christensen, the professional trainer from Colorado who’s been breeding her Quartermoon line of field goldens (they’re the tree-climbers) for more than 40 years. 

“I was told this by an old-timer when I was first starting out,” she said, “and in my 50 years with the breed I’ve always found it to be true: ‘You always hear people say, ‘Goldens just want to please you.’ Well, I’ve never met a golden that wanted to please anyone but himself. To be sure, they want you to be pleased with them—and they’re masters at making you believe that what they just did was exactly what you wanted!’”

Thinkers, indeed—and one step ahead of us too. 

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