text: Homegrown retrievers: market gunners and early sport hunters required tough breeds. - Free Online Library
  Homegrown retrievers: market gunners and early sport hunters required tough breeds.
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  MLA style: "Homegrown retrievers: market gunners and early sport hunters required tough breeds.." The Free Library. 2010 InterMedia Outdoors, Inc. 16 Oct. 2017 https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Homegrown+retrievers%3a+market+gunners+and+early+sport+hunters+required...-a0227813375
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  APA style: Homegrown retrievers: market gunners and early sport hunters required tough breeds.. (n.d.) >The Free Library. (2014). Retrieved Oct 16 2017 from https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Homegrown+retrievers%3a+market+gunners+and+early+sport+hunters+required...-a0227813375
  THE RECORDED HISTORY OF WATERFOWL retrievers in America begins around 1800, and continues through today. However, in a sense, the year 1920--right after World War I--divides the history into two distinct, identifiable periods.
  However, we do know the kind of dogs those hardy souls on the Bay needed and bred. Waterfowl numbers were unimaginable. Legal limits were nonexistent. The market for duck and goose meat was insatiable.
  Hunters shot a lot of ducks, both for their own consumption and for the market. Clearly, their dogs had to be excellent markers, capable of marking many birds from each flock. They had to possess great stamina to retrieve dozens of birds all day, every day. Because the Bay's waters could be rough, these dogs had to be large and extremely strong. The water was. also quite cold, so the dogs had to have waterproof, well-insulated coats. Because only such a dog could succeed under those severe conditions, Bay hunters necessarily bred such rough-and-tumble brutes down through those many undocumented decades.
  The Chesapeake today is still big, strong and tough. The AKC breed standard calls for a height at the withers of 21 to 27 inches and a weight of 55 to 80 pounds. I've seen some out in the marshes substantially larger than that. The double-coat consists of a soft, insulating undercoat overlaid with a harsh, oily outercoat that is practically waterproof. The color can be anything from dark brown to faded tan (a.k.a. deadgrass).
  Not surprisingly, as a hunter's dog for the most severe conditions, the "much of muchness" Chesapeake remains supreme.
  We know very little about the origins of this breed. Experts generally agree that Wisconsin market hunters developed the American water spaniel in the middle of the 19th century. But they are less certain about what breeds were used in the process. The breeds most frequently suggested are the extinct English water spaniel, field spaniel, Irish water spaniel, curly-coated retriever and Chesapeake.
  The AWS became quite popular in the Upper Midwest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Whatever its origin, the AWS excels as both an all-weather waterfowl retriever and a tireless upland flusher, being equally talented in both types of work.
  RELATED ARTICLE: WHAT IS TOLLING?
  We learned tolling from foxes. Pairs of foxes have apparently always used the following technique to lure rafts of ducks to within pouncing distance of shore: With one fox flattened out at the water's edge, the other fox prances and plays along the shoreline. For reasons known only to ducks, the behavior draws rafts of ducks like a magnet draws iron particles. When the ducks are close enough, the prostrated fox leaps and catches any nearby duck. Then follows a lakeside duck dinner for two, very rare, please.
  Human hunters have long imitated this technique. By the 16th century, English and Dutch hunters were using little fox-sized dogs called "Pipers" to lure rafts of ducks into nets. The hidden owner would repeatedly toss a stick along the shoreline for the bouncy little dog to retrieve. Long before Europeans arrived in North America, Native Americans in the area now known as Nova Scotia attracted rafts of ducks to within the range of their bows by pulling a fox pelt back and forth on a cord strung between two shoreline trees.
  Early European settlers in the Nova Scotia region--it's not known whether it was the French before their expulsion in 1775 or the subsequent British inhabitants--used little fox-like dogs not only to toll ducks with animated retrieves along the shore, but also to fetch subsequently shot fowl. Thus, Nova Scotians have used such dogs to toll and retrieve waterfowl since at least the 18th century.
  Today, we call those dogs "Nova Scotia duck tolling retrievers."
  For more information about the breeds presented in this article, visit the following national breed club Web sites: