Day 8 – Flight A – Test 5 – Goose Pond-Land/Water – Saturday, October 24

Flight A: Judges Robert Rascoe and Tom McMorrow 

Goose Pond-Land/Water – Land/Water Triple, Double Blind, Walk-up

Flight A moved to their fourth test having lost 20 dogs from their fourth series. 

This test is a Land/Water Triple with a land blind, water blind and walk-up. The handler stands on a mat on the right shore of Goose Pond. They look across a road and up a hill with checkered cover. The pond on the handler's left has heavy, dead-grass colored cover and is thick around the edge and extends way out into the water. The walk-up comes from behind a tree on the right, thrown to the left, landing 36 yards from the line. Bird number two is a flyer with the gun station up the hill in front of the line, shot to the left, landing in heavy cover 130 yards from the line. Bird three comes out of a blind on the shore of the pond. It is thrown to the left, landing out in the water in the cover at 54 yards. The water blind is under the arc of bird number three on the shore at 78 yards. The land blind is across the road and up the hill, between birds one and two at the base of a bush 127 yards from the line. This is an interrupted test.

We arrived mid-afternoon to discover that the second bird down, the flyer, is the money bird. A few of the dogs squared gun station #3, which meant that they in turn squared the road, which pushed them up the hill toward the land blind. This domino effect created the need for several teams to handle on the flyer.