Day 3 – Flight A – Test 2 – Bruce's Farm-Land/Water – Monday, October 19

Flight A: Judges Robert Rascoe and Tom McMorrow 

Bruce's Farm-Land/Water – Land/Water Triple, Double Blind and Walk-up

Flight A moved to their second test after finishing the last few dogs to run at Palmetto East. When the callbacks were given, 50 dogs had been dropped from the first series. We arrived at this site as the test was being tweaked by the Judges and Marshal. 

Bruce's Farm is a Land/Water Triple with a land blind and a water blind. The first bird is a walk-up. The Judge's instructions to the handlers said that they should pick up one bird and then run the land blind. They were then instructed to pick up the remaining two birds and run the waster blind last. The line was located on the far left end of an oblong cattle pond. Bird number one, the walk-up, came from right to left, thrown towards the edge of the pond at 31 yards from the line. Bird number two was a flyer with the gunners situated behind two hay bales. They shot the flyer and it lander 150 yards straight in front of the line. The correct line to this bird had the dog swimming the far left side of the pond, going up a hill and into a large pasture with plenty of room to get lost. Bird number three was across the pond to the right at 110 yards. These gunners were also hidden behind two hay bales and threw their bird to the left. This bird was in the hip pocket of the flyer gun station. The land blind was located directly to the handler's right under the arc of the walk-up bird. It was placed 32 yards from the line in a hole at the base of tree. The water blind was across the pond in an alcove behind a brush pile at the water's edge.

Test Dog #1 came to the line at 10:40 am. He did a nice job on the walk-up bird, picking it up first. On the land blind he got into the holding blind area, but found his bird. Next he went for the long, right-hand bird #3. He had an extensive hunt in the field right of the gun station, but hunted till he found the bird. He had to be handled on the long flyer. Test Dog #2 came to the line at 11:01 am. He picked up the long right-hand bird first. Next, in running the land blind, he went to the poison walk-up bird, but he was reheeled and ran the blind. He had to be handled on both the walk-up bird and the flyer, finishing with a very nice job on the water blind.

The first running dog came to the line at 11:18 am and did a nice job. As the next dog ran, it became apparent that the barbed wire fence that had been previously pointed out to the handlers was going to become an obstacle in this test. This running dog will be given a rerun at the end of this series. The committee went into the field and made this test safer. Of the first five running dogs, we had one nice job, one rerun and three handles. This test averaged 7-8 minutes per dog.

"The Eleventh Judge"