[healsit]

I have watched the last couple years of SRS Crown Championships. I am very intrigued by the SRS events and would love to enter one as an amateur. I am sure I would get smoked by better trainers/handlers/dogs, but that's ok. It still sounds fun. I am mainly a "hunt tester" and not a "field trialer." Does anyone here have experience in running SRS events? What do you do to train for SRS events? I am aware they use dokkens (or some type of plastic bird). But what about setups, etc?

 

[doverstreet]

I ran my first and only SRS event last year, so take this for what it's worth. There are several different types of setups run at SRS events: hunt test, field trial, and hunt savvy. Hunt test set ups will be similar to a challenging master setup. You say you run hunt test so I won't spend much time discussing that. The hunt savvy test will incorporate a very realistic hunting setup: layout blinds, boats, mutt huts, lots of decoys, hunting partners (i.e. multiple callers/guns at the line). Then the field trial setup can be anything from qualifying to open level. The field trial setup we ran was a triple with two retired. One of the retired guns had a big hidden pond in line and it was an additional 50 points if the dogs didn't get wet. Distances were approximately: middle go bird 150, right hand retired 300, left hand retired 500. That's all I saw we left to go home and lick our wounds.

 

[Wayne Nutt]

http://www.retrievertraining.net/fo...ning.net/forums/showthread.php?162889-SRS-setup-Rowdy-(by-Pirate)&highlight=srs

Maybe this will help some.

 

[priceskeet]

I ran my first and only SRS event last year, so take this for what it's worth. There are several different types of setups run at SRS events: hunt test, field trial, and hunt savvy. Hunt test set ups will be similar to a challenging master setup. You say you run hunt test so I won't spend much time discussing that. The hunt savvy test will incorporate a very realistic hunting setup: layout blinds, boats, mutt huts, lots of decoys, hunting partners (i.e. multiple callers/guns at the line). Then the field trial setup can be anything from qualifying to open level. The field trial setup we ran was a triple with two retired. One of the retired guns had a big hidden pond in line and it was an additional 50 points if the dogs didn't get wet. Distances were approximately: middle go bird 150, right hand retired 300, left hand retired 500. That's all I saw we left to go home and lick our wounds.

Daniel has it about right on what to look for. Need a well rounded dog to do good. Train for most anything you can think of, you never know what they will come up with at an event. It's a lot of fun to run.
Run some and have fun. Read the rules so you will know how the points system works. They have been using ATB's for ducks the last few years.

 

[Hmbyrd]

Ran my first one this last year took third in the amature division. They are right train for everything and def look into the points system it can kill you if you don't know exactly how it works.. I had a great time and met some great people