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Thread: Blinds Day

  1. #11
    Senior Dog TuMicks's Avatar
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    ?Que esta hole in the turkey blinds?

  2. #12
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    My husband bought a blind for turkey hunting but it got ripped so I now use it on this drill. It looks very much like an opening between two bushes. It helps teach run a straight line through cover and not to skirt around the outside. They are doing a lot of keyhole set up in the tests up here. One of the last Masters we ran the dogs had to run between two large round hay bales. What an up roar there was when the judges dropped all of the dogs that did not take the line between the bales! Another thing that the judges are fond of doing is throwing a mark across a gap. When I set this up in training one of the fellows questioned it. Sure enough at the trail on the weekend the middle bird was thrown across an opening. Many of the dogs, his included headed straight through the opening. There always seems to be something that has to be taught, over and through but never around.

  3. #13
    Senior Dog TuMicks's Avatar
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    I've seen a lot of illustrations of this keyhole thing in RO and videos and stuff utilizing hay bails. We have almost limitless "keyholes" since we have sage choked land. But often we can isolate a couple of bushes and set up specific angles. My MH has done this so much, she lines up, spots anything like that in the path and heads for it, almost like she's done the geometric calculations in her head before she leaves the line. Rocket Dog's behavior is so rough at this point (and she is so d@mn FAST) threading the needle with her is very hard. But we will continue to work on it.

    Are you saying that they are throwing birds past obstructions where the dog cannot follow the bird to the ground? Or are you saying they stick you in a duck blind and only allow the dog a partial view of the field? Oh, dear... I would definitely have to practice on that even with my older dog.

  4. #14
    Senior Dog TuMicks's Avatar
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    -april-2nd-jpg

    So the main feature here involved the angling on the slopes up and down, the usual sage-brush clutter, and crossing the road at different angles, plus the usual long-short-long thing. Wind was not a factor... but it was soooo cold. Not a problem for the dogs, of course. I had to follow Rocket Dog out and handle her from closer up. I suppose eventually we'll be able to handle her exclusively from the line. My older MH could have done better on the acute angle across the road. That's the sort of thing we'll need to use attrition on over the season.

  5. #15
    House Broken EvanG's Avatar
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    May I ask why your blinds are so short?

    EvanG

  6. #16
    Real Retriever alixb's Avatar
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    Hi Evan: I thought I would let you know that I did take Hope to the field trials training. She did so well. The trainer said it was very obvious that she was trained & that I wasn't. LOL. We had lots of fun. Although I will never be a hunter, I sure got a thrill out of watching her do what she knows. I wasn't crazy about the dead duck in my hand but was so proud of her that she knew what to do & with such gusto. I didn't meet your friend. She was not there. It was a lady called Linda who ran the clinic. Trying to decide what to do next with her. Any suggestions?
    -miss-mallard-jpg

  7. #17
    Senior Dog TuMicks's Avatar
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    Reasons they are so short...

    1. I'm just guesstimating the distance. Some may be longer than I'm representing
    2. Some of them, some days are beyond what the dogs will see at a HT (yesterday there was one).
    3. Some are short simply because we're doing short-long-short-long etc.
    4. We use terrain such that there is almost never a straight line anywhere and the exercise has to do with handling precision. We find that when the opportunity to run long, hard, straight... our big dogs do well. When the test involves a lot of difficulty and suction and danger zones, we can get them out of it.

    We kind of train for what we see at HT's.

  8. #18
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    In response to post #13 what they are doing is placing birds so that the dog gets a good view of it against an open background and then the bird will land in front of a patch of cover. Many of the dogs will see the wide open space behind the arc and head right for it and get lost behind the mark. others wind the bird as the go through the opening and then hunt back through the cover.
    We have run out of duck blinds at hunt tests. At one master the judges supplied a whole bunch of materials and the first order of the day was for the handlers to get together and build a duck blind. That was an interesting exercise in and of itself.

  9. #19
    House Broken EvanG's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by TuMicks View Post
    Reasons they are so short...

    2. Some of them, some days are beyond what the dogs will see at a HT

    We kind of train for what we see at HT's.
    This, I suspect, is most of the "why", along with some limitations on training grounds. Many people fall into the practice of 'training down' to the HT level and place needless barriers on field performance. Though extending distance is rightly done incrementally, if you're preparing to run blinds in tests around 100 yards, you should be training on blinds around 300 - 400 yards routinely. Why? Simple; distance erodes control.

    if your dog lines well at 300 yards, he will tend to easily line especially well at 100 yards. If he stops sharply at 300 - 400 yards, he'll slide to a stop on 100 yard blinds without any problems. If he will cast accurately on long blinds, he will tend to drive long accurate casts on shorter blinds, and so on.

    Just words to the wise, but if you stick to the short stuff long term your dog's abilities will be needlessly limited. Perhaps I've asked this before, but are you following a proven program for fieldwork?

    EvanG

  10. #20
    Senior Dog TuMicks's Avatar
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    -april-8th-jpg
    The marks were wide open. Should have been easy-peezey. But our dogs run typically in very sage-infested fields and the dogs have a frame of reference. This just ate their lunch. My 7 y.o. MH did pretty darn well. I am such a novice handler I screwed up on the walk-up. Luckily, the dog knows what she's doing.

    We did the blinds first with Rocket Dog. She did reasonably well... though I still had to walk out to her to get her to handle. Came back and tried to do the first mark (actually, the middle one) and she jumped out in front of me. We put her back in the truck. BUT, today...

    -apil-9th-jpg

    7 y.o. MH... no problem. I did better. Making progress there. But the big improvement was with Rocket Dog. Again, we did the blinds first. Mind you, even though she had not seen the marks, the scent was everywhere. Whoa, Nellie! She took a line. Needed a modicum of handling, AND I was handling her from the line. I didn't have to walk out. She took my handles. We got our left back (hooray!) she took the overs (more literally than I was prepared for.) And OMG... when she drives back, she does it at 100 mph.

    We lined up to do the first mark (we did the right hand bird, not the walk-up) and she sat up tall and still and quiet and actually marked it. Hooray #2. But, alas, by the time we tried to do the left hand bird, she was completely jazzed, went down into launch position, quivering and whining and getting crazy. So, went back into truck.

    So, we're not batting a thousand. But I'm happy.

 



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