March All-Age Setup

This is an all-age land setup with two long retired guns and a short hip pocket mark with a standout gunner throwing out of order.

The cover is actually thicker than it appears...the field is full of spring wild flowers about half way to the knee.

The mark distances are as follows:

Long right mark- 442 yards
Short middle mark-377 yards
Long left mark-495 yards

The order of throw is: Long right bird first; middle short second; long left third. The wind is blowing stiffly (about 15 mph) from right to left. This makes the line to the left long bird down wind of the short middle bird.

I chose to run this by primarily selecting the short bird first, having the two long guns retire, picking up the left long bird second, and finishing with the long right hand bird last.

The potential difficulties with this setup are numerous but here are some major factors which can influence a dog:

1)- The two left birds are thrown through a funneled down slot making the lines extremely tight with no real options for flaring...very intimidating to some dogs so be extremely careful with corrections (I choose to typically help by having the gunner stand up and hey-hey any dog in this type scenario that has problems with the lines and would even re-throw the long mark as a single if the picture becomes too skewed and the dog gets lost en-route.

2) The hip pocket presents a tough check down bird even while standing out.

3) The right hand bird is thrown into the wind making fighting the old fall areas and the grain of the field even more difficult (look at how the strips are noticable in the photo...dogs will tend to run a row instead of angling across them for a long run).

4) Distance- the extremely long marks can quickly zap a dog's energy, stamina, and will to drive. This effect on the dogs will tend to exaggerate the prominance of the short gunner when they are sent for either long gun making the short gunner much more appealing and driving past him much more difficult.

This setup can be altered several ways...here are a few:

1) Retire the short gunner and leave standing the long left gunner making the check down bird more difficult.

2) Run as singles.

3) Run as a double/single with the right bird and short bird being the double(retiring the right bird) and the long left as a punch bird single.

4) Run as a single/double with the right bird as a single to start the setup and the two left birds as a hip-pocket double.

There are various other ways to run this so determine what your dog needs in terms of either check down work, long work, punch birds, retired birds, etc., etc. and adjust accordingly.

Good training!

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