2014 MNRC Blog: DAY 6: Flight A: Blake Lemish and Michelle Love; Test 4 “Puck”

This test, "Puck," is a land/water triple with a double blind and a walk-up. The Judges requirements are that after all three of the birds are down, you must pick-up one bird of your choice and the handler must then turn to his left and run a land blind under the arc of bird number one at 59 yards. After completing the land blind, the contestant picks up the remaining two birds in the order of their choice and then runs the water blind up the middle.

As the handler approaches the line, a duck is thrown and lands in the water 35 yards to the left of the line. Then bird number two, far right of the line, is thrown to the left at 110 yards. The flyer is then shot up a hill, landing 124 yards in front of the line. After the handler picks up a bird of his choice, he has to run the land-blind under the arc of bird number one, 59 yards to the left of the line. After the other birds have been picked up, the second water blind crosses three pieces of water and two points of land located 110 yards in front of the line.

Late in the morning, we arrived at "Puck" where Flight A came to Test 4 with 96 dogs. When we initially arrived, the wind was in the handler's face. Most handlers were picking up the flyer as their go bird. We watched three dogs in a row one-whistle the left-hand land blind. The water level in the pond has dropped since the last flight ran a test here. This makes the left-hand bird much more difficult. It lands closer to the bank and makes the blind under the arc more difficult. We watched two handlers today pick this left-hand bird as their go-bird versus the flyer.

Flight A took a break to do a re-bird and gun change. When they came back from their break, the weather conditions had changed. The wind us now blowing 10-12 mph from left to right across the test. We watched five more dogs run and saw some excellent work and even a two-whistle water blind.