The final Sixth Series for Flight A was at John and Mary
Stracka’s property, "Tired Bottom Farm." We are overlooking the technical pond which
is full of sticks, points, islands and cover variation. The test begins as the handler
walks up to the line with a dry shot, after which the judges ask the team to go
pick up the bird from the 105 yard land blind on the far left of the test. The lines to
the land/water blind runs down the road, takes a sliver of the pond to the
other shore, where the dog needs to run up a gentle hill to get his bird. After
the dog returns with the bird, the marking portion of the test begins. The
first bird is the middle duck flyer at 109 yards shot to the right. The second
bird is the left-hand dead duck at 60 yards thrown to the right the line to
this bird is across the corner of the pond a small corner of the pond. The
third duck to go down is also a dead duck thrown to the left onto the peninsula
at 61 yards. The final part of the test is the water blind on the right side of
the marks at 85 yards. This is a challenging test and the handlers are allowed
to complete each portion of it at the judge’s discretion. The test took between 10-12 minutes per dog. When we were there in
the mid-afternoon the wind was at the handler’s back at 15 mph with gusts up to
20 mph from time to time.
The first portion of this test to negotiate is a cold blind
run mostly on land. But the dog must cut the corner of the pond and run up the
hillside to take the direct line to the bird. As far as the marks, the dogs we
watched picked up the right-hand dead duck first. The dog must navigate the
widest portion of the pond to get to this bird on the direct line, going to the
left of the island. The left-hand bird was the second bird the dogs went for,
crossing the corner of the right-hand pond going across the road to get the
bird. For the middle flyer, the line was going through a larger corner of the
pond, up onto the shore and across the road. There was a small pothole on the
other side and the direct line to the bird took in a sliver of this small pond.
The final retrieve of the 2017 MAI was a water blind. The dog entered the pond on a slight angle, cut the right side corner of the island, swam diagonally to the opposite shore, finally
running on land to get the last retrieve of the day.
Flight A – Test 6 – #30
Flight A – Test 6 -PT 2 – #30
