Is anybody familiar with ACK Hunt Test. I had seen ESPN retriever trials where the dogs are retrieving some rubber dummy-like bird and admired the dog and handler skills. I have retrievers and joined a local dog club and went to one of their field events, an AKC Hunt Test, expecting it to be like what I had seen on TV and was shocked by what was going on. They had several stakes offered for young to advanced dogs with about 150 dogs total entered. They were throwing live birds (ducks) up into the air and shooting them for no other purpose except for the dogs to be judged retrieving them. People told me they entered their dogs in these test to get ACK Hunting Titles on their dogs.

Out of curiosity I went to the ACK website and found that there are hundreds of these “hunt test” and “field trials” held annually in most states. I live in Maryland and found that they have over a dozen of these test annually in my area.

What is going on at these AKC hunt test is not hunting. There is no reason to use live animals for this. Why don’t they just use rubber birds like EPSN does to test the dog’s skills. These events aren’t advertised for the obvious reasons. You should check out the AKC website because there is most likely one of these events going in your area that you do not know about. This is really wrong. These test are run in accordance with AKC guidelines which requires live birds to be used. How do they get away with doing something like this???