Schooner's Hunt Test

This morning Schooner ran in another Master Hunter hunt test at Scatter Creek. He was doing very well, automatically hupping upon flushing his first pheasant. As in a field trial, I was waiting for the judge to tap me on the shoulder to signal me to send Schooner for the retrieve. Instead he said "Send" out loud. On hearing this, Schooner immediately took off to fetch the downed bird. Of course when I saw this, I instantly gave him the signal to go also - to salvage the situation. We got through that with a nice delivery to hand. The next pheasant Schooner flushed was shot out of his vision behind a large fir tree. On his own he repositioned himself for a better view. That would have been fine, but seeing the bird hit the ground, he then broke for it. With some loud shouting and whistling I stopped him, but the damage was done. He got tossed out of the game for breaking.
I stuck around to see some other dogs run. The trial springers I knew did very well, while some of the fluffy type show cockers were running completely out of control. Although we did not win that 6th Master Hunter ribbon today to finally get the full title, we had fun anyway.
Mearle