The other AA judging thread presented an interesting aspect of judging, that being the flyer and judging relative work. It is a timely question for me as just last week I ran both of my dogs on a nice Amateur test. One of my dogs is a very-very good marker, the other has his moments and is overall very consistent, but clearly the less talented of the two. The last-bird-down flyer was about 150 yards out and shot slight angle back into 18"-24" tall, wet, spring grass. My better marking dog ran about dog 30 and his flyer landed right in the middle of where most had fallen. He ran out there on line, then hunted that tight area, putting his nose down at every spot a bird had landed. The grass was high enough that you couldn't see the bird laying in the grass. It took him a while, (seemed like forever from the line), before he found the bird. He never hunted away from the AOF, but I had comments on his big flyer hunt. My next dog came up about 20 dogs later, his was a big beautiful arcing bird about 20 yards further than all the others. He ran right out to the bird and picked it up on a line. Hard to be unimpressed by the pin job, on the other hand the other hunt was very tight, showed he knew the bird was there and he stuck with it.
Would you score the pin job higher than the tight hunt in the AOF? How do you feel in general about judging flyer hunts?
BTW both dogs were called back and I have no idea how these judges scored the two jobs.
John
Would you score the pin job higher than the tight hunt in the AOF? How do you feel in general about judging flyer hunts?
BTW both dogs were called back and I have no idea how these judges scored the two jobs.
John