Southern Flight this weekend

[goosebruce]

Johnny won the gun and zinger coupon, with 2 different draws and 2 different cards. He drew another card and gave the zinger coupon away to someone else. That is THE luckiest man in the world in raffles. hes won 10 shotguns in last 2 years. he also one of the hardest workers you can imagine at a hunt test.

I had some pretty far out ideals for this test, and my club made them all happen. I got to say, I couldnt be any happier with how things came out. The gamble we took would either bankrupt us, or make us stronger. It has made us much stronger and closer, and it was the most fun I have ever had at a hunt test. We took EVERY obstacal in stride, and overcame every single one of them without a hitch. We put on a test to payback everyone that works so hard when we come play at theirs... The more I think about it, the more fun it was. Thanks to everyone that BUSTED their azzes this weekend.

If you think that sat finished land was something, ya shudda seen it when it had a triple in it (yup, 5 marks!). The judges decided it was enough of a marking test as a double double, so they shaved a bird. Half of those dogs that crashed on the land blind could have been saved had they given a right over as their first cast... by the time they got 2 refusals into the wind and levee, an over couldnt pull it out. That was a great water blind too, and the morning flight had a little more wind that made it even more fraught with pitfalls! Give good judges good grounds, the abilty to put a test or bird wherever they want, time, they'll give you tests that like that. travis

[Dutch Dog]

Not too sure about saturday, but I felt we would have fared pretty well on sunday if'n she hadn't been in heat (finished tests). Oh well, I guess that's what happens when you got a female. Boy that was a BADAZZ test on saturday. If you passed, you deserve it.

[70 sprig]

John , just so nobody gets the wrong idea , I stepped out to take a leak sometime in the night , heard a vehicle and looked up , yep that ole ragly chevy was makin the corner out there . Luckily I was well hidden in the shadows

[bolivarduck]

GB,

I won the Zinger cupon, but to use it I will have to bust out a couple of hundred $$!

[dukdawgn]

YOU STILL GOT A CAN-KICKIN HEADED YUR WAY FOR WINNING THAT COUPON!!

if ya'll had let barlow stick with his ticket, I would have STOLEN that coupon from him fair 'n square!!

congrats on the ribbon for the Saint dog.....

[gator]

GB,

I won the Zinger cupon, but to use it I will have to bust out a couple of hundred $$!

hey BD, although it will be of immense pain and agony, I'll take that coupon off your hands. i would "NEVER" want anyone to be weighed down by such financial burdens

gator

[bolivarduck]

YOU STILL GOT A CAN-KICKIN HEADED YUR WAY FOR WINNING THAT COUPON!!

if ya'll had let barlow stick with his ticket, I would have STOLEN that coupon from him fair 'n square!!

congrats on the ribbon for the Saint dog.....

Yeah, if you had sold me the right size t-shirt I would have let you kept it! I had a great time and you and the other guys with SF put on a great test. Had a lot of fun watching Steve light Barlow's 'hula skirt' on fire Saturday night! Thanks go to Steve Vires and The Training Group for getting Saint to the level he is at. We are working on line manners and honoring now. We started yesterday afternoon by working with a local back-yard trainer sitting at heel while his dogs got to retrieve- it almost drove Saint nuts! After several minutes he was fine, I started seeing results by the time we left. I'm planning on M,W,F going down to his house and working on honoring and T,Th working on obiedience and a few other little things. Hope to see you guys at the next training session!

[Meeka]

B3, Skuna, Dutch and Travis - how about even more details and particulars about the setup for the finished tests and how they were run . . . please. Heck, I even got nervous reading what Skuna wrote.

And what do you mean Travis about 5 marks. Do you run a triple land marks then do a double? And with four marks - is that two doubles? How does that work?

And when Travis says a lot of dogs needed a right over, does that mean get their booty back on the line right away, then go to work, or does that mean give a right over to get a right angle back from the dawg?

[B3]

OK Meeka, I'll try. I can remember the set ups but can't comment on the Sat tests too much because we picked up right out of the gate.

I told some other folks this at the time. Remember the scene from jaws when they see the shark for the first time? Dreyfus says,

"WE'RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BOAT"

Welp,thats what I was thinking. We're gonna need a bigger dog. I wasn't too worried about the marks. They were into the wind and your dog could be a poor marker and wind them. Thats just speculating because we didn't run them.

We did try the blind. 90-100 yds angling across a levee with stake 50 yds past. 30 mph wind blowing nearly in your face but more rt to left. Winger down levee to left . Honor after a short walkup where bird is picked up left. Honor at that point while working dog picks up an inline double at your dogs left.

So needless to say it was a huge amount of leftward suction on the blind. If you ever got significantly left you couldn't recover unless your dog would rotate a right hand back INTO THE WIND. Travis was right about starting out with a right over even if he was still on line. I thought about it and gave the literal cast instead of the over. The over was my 3rd cast but we were sunk. We eventually got up on the levee but after hacking around that much I didn't expect her to carry a cast on line far enough to get in veiw out past the levee and still be in play. We picked up at that point.

The wind was the biggest factor by far but it had multiple factors to make it tough. Thats the difference with finished blinds. A lot of factors in a short distance coupled with bird placement that creates bunkers for you to lose your dog in. If he goes in a bunker you likely won't be able to handle out.

THe second set of marks was a wide open double-can't remember them that well.

I'll try and describe Sat later-I've got to get back to work.

Bill

[goosebruce]

Yup.. the test was a walk up double, with the sitting dog picking up the birds (meaning the walk up dog did a cold honor). It had to be a double to satisfy the honoring rules (mutiple marks), and if you did it different (without satisfying the honor), you had the sitting dog sit there thru a 'challenging' blind. When you finished the blind, you moved to right bucket and shot a triple. It was changed to a double. That test was designed for the south winds the weatherman promised... blind would have been eaiser, and you'd seen what kind of marking test that really was. It was a neat test to run. Rowdy picked the marks up like he put them out, and 3 whistled the blind. travis

[skuna]

I think GB and B3 covered it pretty good. The wind was definitly a huge factor. Ace ran straight at the levee got to it and started to angle left. I stopped him and gave an over cast and got him up on top of the levee and stopped him again. He was perfectly in line and I gave a right angle back and he took a straight back and ended up 3 or 4 yards to the left of the bird. I blew a sit wistle but he never checked up. I think I freaked and blew the wistle again but can't really remember for sure. I got back to the truck and my buddy told me the wind picked up to about 40 as soon as I started lining up for the blind. I was really consentraiting on the line to the stake and never really noticed. The dam wind did the same thing that morning when I was running the water blind. I noticed this time cause it blew my hat into the briars behind the judges.

Benjy

[B3]

Yeah, anybody that got thru that had a big time dog. I told myself when I went to the line that I was going to give an over . I think I lost it mentally. I think if we'd not had a lot of scalloping and hacking around by the time we hit the levee we might have been able to carry the big cast needed at that point.

Meeka, Sunday tests were on land a wide open triple shot round the horn. The factor on each mark was that the birds were all dropped just behind little rice levees. The blind was betwwen marks across a small levee.

Water was 3 short birds all dropped in thick flooded crp. Down the shore water blind under arc of rt bird.

[skuna]

I wished I had ran Sunday. I only signed up for Saturday. I didn't want to stink it up saturday and then have to come back and stink it up again. I trained for " down the shore" water blinds for two weeks before the test. I would have liked to see how we did on one. I'm sure we'll get our chance soon enough though.

Benjy

[Dutch Dog]

If you run a weekend of tests you will just about be guaranteed a DTS waterblind.

[msbigdawg1234]

Ok I know you boys had a he!! of good time . I want to see some pics post um up.