I've got a pup that's almost 7 mos old.  She's been doing great, and I recently started shooting birds over her when she gives me a good point, just pigeons and chukars so far.  Her retrieving has generally been very good.  Anyway, I took her out to the local game preserve on Sunday and put out some pigeons and chukars.  While we were hunting, we flushed a bonus pheasant that escaped from someone else's hunt.  I shot the pheasant, of course.  She ran over to retrieve the pheasant (her first) but couldn't figure out how to pick it up and returned without the pheasant when I called her.  She retrieved a chukar perfectly 10 mins later.  I took the pheasant home with me and tried having her retrieve it in the yard.  She was eventually able to bring it back, but only after taking a long time flipping it around and trying to get a good hold on it.  FYI, I think all her adult teeth are in now, so this shouldn't be a teething issue.

Has anyone had this issue with a dog?  It occurred to me that she's never retrieved anything larger than a pigeon/chukar before seeing this pheasant, and even then it sometimes takes her a couple seconds to get a good hold.  Would practice with one of those dokken pheasant dummies be a good idea? 

I actually had that same problem with my pup on his first few pheasants.  He would retrieve a pigeon with the best of them but pheasant he just wasnt sure. So I started using more dead pheasants and ducks in my training regime.  In no time at all he was grabbing them off the ground in a dead run never breaking stride.  I also re force fetched him on pheasant, not sure if that is proper procedure but it seemed to help. I am fairly new to this game so an experienced trainer may have a much better way of correcting the issue; those are just my two cents.