Brittany is "Hard Mouthed"

[Lund4Fish]

I've had 5 Brittany's over the years and I guess I was lucky in the fact that they were all good dogs, good pointers and soft mouthed retrievers. My new male (1-1/2 years old) has refused to fetch anything in the yard during training. I finally got him into a bunch of birds this past weekend and he had several points and retrieved 2 pheasants for me. The only bad thing was he really chewed on them before bringing them back. I didn't want to yell at him, since he finally was retrieving, but I need to get him over the chewing, or there won't be much left for me to chew on. Any ideas how I get him over the "hard mouth" thing, without hurting his ambition or retrieving?