2013 MNRC Blog: DAY SEVEN – Test Four – Flight A – Roy's Pond

"Roy's Pond" is a land/water triple with a blind. This test contains a flyer which is shot first. The handler faces across a pond and looks up on the side of a hill. The flyer comes out of a well-brushed blind and is thrown angled back to the left. The bird lands high up on the side of the hill. The next bird down is the middle bird. The gunner is to the left of the line close to the water. The duck is thrown over high dense weeds out into the pond. The third bird is the left land bird. This bird station is left and behind the line, throwing right into a mowed area over a small hill. After the three ducks are retrieved, the dog is sent on a blind to the far right corner of the pond. This duck is planted just out of the water behind some tree roots.

The second day at "Roy's Pond" for Flight A has much of the same work as yesterday. The challenge on the test continues to be the flyer. The word from the gallery is that 10 of the first 12 dogs had to be handled. From the line, if the flyer lands behind the willow tree on the far shore, the dog cannot see where it actually lands. This seems to produce a much larger hunt than the birds that do not land behind the tree. While some dogs have hunted, most of the dogs that we saw later today did not seem to be having as much trouble as those who ran early. The blind has caused no problems during our visits. The consensus among the handlers is that black is still the best color to wear for visibility. When we left, there were still 35 dogs to run this test.

Jack Morris describes the test…