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JUDGES CORNER
December 2004 - January
2004 - by
Tim Gibson As you receive this issue of Hunting Retriever many of you will be in the middle of what is hopefully an enjoyable and productive hunting season. I realize it’s difficult to think about judging and hunt tests at this time of year. For that reason, the scenarios I’ll be covering will be short and simple. A few of you who have commented that I tend to be wordy can go ahead and consider this my Christmas present to you. We’re going to look at a couple of common misconceptions many judges and handlers have about our testing program. I’m also going to give you a peek at what’s coming in the next magazine, which will include my “judging” report on the recent HRC International Fall Grand Hunt in South Carolina. That’s right - just when many of you thought the Grand committee had things going in the right direction, they asked yours truly to judge again!
Before we begin the scenarios, I want to use a little space in this column to
briefly tell you about HRC’s new Upland Hunt Test Guide.
Some of you have been asking what it is, where it came from, and why
and how it was developed. It’s
available for downloading on the HRC website for anyone interested, which
should be every HRC Upland hunt judge and club holding an upland hunt test.
I think it’s important to first note what this guide is not.
It is not a new set of “rules” to govern our upland hunting
program. As it’s subtitle says,
the guide is a “Comprehensive Overview of the HRC Upland Hunt Test”.
It’s an “official HRC document” in that it was carefully reviewed and
approved by the HRC executive committee for distribution to the membership. It
was developed and written over the last year or so with input from a diverse
group of knowledgeable individuals including field reps, current Upland
judges, experienced Upland retriever trainers and handlers, and some of the
original framers of our Upland Hunt Test rules and guidelines.
Although HRC/UKC created the Upland program and title several years ago,
we’ve never offered any assistance, training, or instructions to clubs or
judges to insure they’re able to successfully conduct a quality Upland Hunt
Test. Ergo, the new Upland Hunt Test Guide, which we hope clubs and judges
will study closely. The Guide should be invaluable in helping clubs and judges
make good decisions about safety issues, birds, test grounds, hunt test
personnel, and perhaps most importantly, should help insure that those
retrievers that demonstrate the proper Upland hunting qualities and skills
required per our HRC rulebook are the ones that are awarded championship
points and titles at the end of the hunt.
Without going over it page by page, I do want to say that the Upland
Hunt Test Guide covers the following major areas:
1) Successful test set-up. Everything
you always wanted to know including the best birds to use and how to care for
them, successful bird planting techniques, weather factors, proper cover, and
test scenarios. 2) Safety –
gunner instructions, when handlers and gunners should or should not shoot and
why. 3) Evaluation – what the judges should be looking for from both the
handler and dog during the walk-up, quartering, flushing, and other portions
of the testing. Throughout the
Guide, common questions about all aspects of Upland testing are asked and
answered. I’m excited about
this document and what it can do to help our Upland program grow.
One judge stated that after reading the bird-planting section he
thought he could get a Dokken pheasant to flush! I hope we can cover more
specifics about the new Guide and include a few Upland test scenarios in
future issues of the Judges Corner. Let’s
get to our first scenario that involves judges changing a test and the
resulting consequences. Scenario:
The club was running two Finished flights at their test.
The morning water test took so long that the second flight of judges
could not start their water series until mid afternoon.
To finish before dark, and with the hunt committees blessing, the
judges decided to shorten a mark. Several
handlers who went out on the morning water test complained they might have
passed had they run the shortened afternoon water test.
One even pointed to rulebook page 52, item 26 of the Guidelines for
Judges & Conducting Hunts, which states: “No dog will carry any score on
a part of a test that was eliminated”. Question:
Do these handlers have a legitimate gripe? Answer: No.
I mentioned in my opening remarks that we’d be looking at some common
misconceptions about judging. One
of those is that every dog, and each flight must get the same exact test.
Often, Mother Nature “changes” a test with a cloud or wind change.
Sometimes judges do it for a number of reasons.
On occasion there is a problem with a bird in a test (visibility, scent
interference, etc.). Smart judges
stop a test, fix the problem and continue. Item 26 on page 52 referenced above
refers to changing a test within a flight of dogs so no dog in the flight is
failed on a bird that was later eliminated. In our scenario, the afternoon water judges felt there was no other way to get through the dogs, not even if they invoked HRC’s “call-back” rule as outlined on page 52, item 34 in the rulebook. The scenario does not explain why the morning water series ran long. It might have been human error, like poor planning by the judges, inadequate preparation by the test committee, or starting late. The Guidelines for Judges and Conducting Hunts, item 25 on page 52 in our rulebook states: “Judges should keep the flow of the Hunt at a good and relaxed pace”. The key word here is “flow”. When judges have a long test to begin with, then something unforeseen occurs such as gun problems, broken wingers, etc., it’s easy for the flow to slow to a trickle. Although it ran long, the morning test was solid and the dogs that went out on the mark that was later shortened for the afternoon flight simply don’t have a valid complaint. I believe it’s important to say the decision to make a change should never be done lightly. In general, once a test is agreed upon it should be run as designed unless there is a valid reason to change and any changes should always have the hunt committee’s approval. By the way, I just had a thought. Would it not be fascinating to compile a list of some of the more outlandish excuses judges and hunt committees have offered for tests starting late and running long? Please e-mail any you might have heard and I’ll try to share them with everyone in a later article. Bearing in mind that not many folks believe much of what they read anymore, feel free to be creative. If you’re a judge or hunt test committee member, include any excuse you think you may need to use at a future hunt. I’ll give a couple of examples from two recent hunts I attended. 1) The hunt committee stated they inadvertently asked a dyslectic club member to put out the signs to the hunt sites. All the handlers got lost and showed up late because the arrows all pointed in the wrong direction! 2) The club indicated it was sent 20 gauge poppers by mistake and had to “field wrap” the hulls with duct tape so they’d fit in their 12 gauge guns. It took them a long time to find someone willing to run test dog! You get the idea. I think it’s time to move to our next scenario. Scenario:
The Finished judges were going over their score sheets at the conclusion of
the test and marking the passes and fails.
Each test had clean, straightforward marks that landed in distinct
areas and most of the dogs did well on these birds.
The land blind was challenging, but the water blind proved especially
tough and they noted a lot of dogs failed on this bird.
Their discussion centered on one dog in particular.
This dog two whistled the land blind, and lined the water blind.
The problem they had with it was the dog was clearly handled to the
area of the fall on two marks (one on land and one on water).
It did however handle with precision, taking every whistle and cast.
One judge wanted to pass the dog, while the other wanted to fail it,
explaining that the excellent control and exceptional blind work did not make
up for the lack of marking skills. Question:
If you were judging, would you pass this dog? Answer:
The judge arguing to pass the dog was making the case that the dog could be
marked “up” sufficiently on a portion of a test to overcome what should be
a failing performance on another part? I
hate to sound crass, but that argument just won’t hold water.
As great as the dog handled and ran it’s blind retrieves, it
demonstrated that it was only capable of doing Seasoned level marking by
picking up a double in each test without aid from the handler.
Every dog was required to pick up a triple in each test.
It would be doing a disservice to the other retrievers in the flight,
and to the test standard to allow this dog to pass given the marking skills
(or lack thereof) it demonstrated on each triple.
By the way, I didn’t mention that after not being called forward for
a ribbon, the handler attempted to argue that the Finished rules said
“testing will consist of double or triple marks for both land and
water…” so in effect the dog was only required to do a double!
I thought that was very creative, but it of course didn’t fly.
Perhaps we need to have another contest.
An award for: “Best
Excuse or Argument by a Failed Handler in a Dramatic Role”.
Send me your nominees. No names, please.
Only the excuse why the dog should not have been failed! In fairness,
I’ll have to recuse myself from competition. Kathy
says nobody can best me when it comes to making excuses, regardless of the
subject, but especially for my dog! I’ve
been known to give judges a play-by-play on why my dog is doing what it’s
doing in a test, as it’s doing it.
This is a highly developed skill, akin to a football player doing the
announcing while he’s running for a touchdown.
Many of you know I judged the HRC Fall
International Grand Hunt in Anderson, SC.
A lot of members who have no firsthand experience with the Grand hunts
don’t realize the impact they have on all levels of our testing program, and
the many judging and hunt test precedents that have been set by the Grand.
I had every intention of giving you a full report about judging the
Carolina Grand in this issue. However,
our esteemed editor asked that I hold my comments until the next magazine,
which will be offering complete coverage of the event.
I’ll do that, but for now, I’ll tell you that a lot of things have
changed since I last judged it and you’ll be surprised at some things I’ll
report. I promise to answer the
two most asked questions about the current Grand format; 1) are the Grand
tests getting easier, and 2) how many cigars does it take for Grand Chairman
Ernie Istre to get through five days of intense testing? Finally, I want to give you a heads up about an upcoming series of articles that will appear as a portion of this column in the coming year. For some time now, many of the seminar instructors have been concerned that we’re not reaching some of our judges. We’re seeing judges who sit through a seminar and the next weekend might set up a test where the dogs can’t see the marks, a test with complex and unnecessarily confusing mechanics, a test with convoluted concepts, or tests where sloppy dog work is accepted because judges are reduced to grading on the curve due to what one field rep termed the “cluster” they’ve set up. Part of problem is simply the volume of material we’re asking people to absorb in a few short hours of seminar instruction. It’s our hope these articles will not only help judges understand how to set up tests to the appropriate standard, and evaluate the dogs accordingly, but help handlers understand exactly what is expected of them at each level of testing. For now, here’s hoping you have a safe hunting season and all your training is paying off with spectacular retrieves from your favorite hunting companion.
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The Judges Corner - copyright
2006 All Rights Reserved Last modified: February 18, 2008 |