Mistakes of a Novice Tippler Flyer Part IV

By: Jacob Sewall
Date: 2005
Category: Droppers

Mistakes of a Novice Tippler Flyer Part IV: Droppers

Now, at last, with a properly and conveniently designed loft and reasonable
expectations in hand it must be time to acquire some breeding stock and set
about getting a kit on the wing. While getting breeding stock may be
necessary at this point due to availability, getting a kit on the wing is
unadvisable. Before the first Tippler egg is laid in your new loft, you
should have droppers in your flying section and be training them. Attempting
to settle young birds with untrained, unsettled droppers is a mistake sure
to cost you some young birds and some hair and is another mistake that I
made.

One of the nuances of the competition Tippler game that differs from other
flying breeds is the necessity of a well-trained kit of droppers. While
Tipplers can be, and are, flown without dropper control, most competition
flyers use droppers. A well-trained dropper team will make your job of
settling and controlling your Tipplers, especially young birds, much easier.

Creating this team of droppers is, however, every bit as time consuming as
settling young Tipplers. I, thinking droppers were just birds to be chucked
out when you wanted the Tipplers down, did not acquire droppers until after
my first round of Tipplers left the nest. The droppers I acquired were all
adult birds and somewhat difficult to train. In the truth of the matter, my
first round of Tipplers though I lost many ended up training my droppers
rather than vice versa. The young Tipplers were much more curious and much
easier to condition than the older birds.
Unfortunately, while the droppers eventually followed the Tipplers and
learned from them, the flocking instinct works both ways and I also lost
some young Tipplers due to their learning bad habits from the droppers.
Droppers can be any bird that suits your location and management, but they
cannot have any bad habits. A dropper with bad habits or that is difficult
to manage is worse than no dropper at all they will be a bad influence on
your impressionable young Tipplers and a never-ending source of aggravation
for you. It is hard enough to get a kit of Tipplers into the air without
adding bad role models to the mix. From this I would say I made two
mistakes, 1) not having droppers trained before my young birds were ready to
settle and 2) starting with old bird droppers.

Based on this experience, I would suggest that the first babies you raise in
your new loft should be droppers. Start with a pair or two of breeder
droppers and foster out their eggs to your stock Tipplers so you get a nice
big kit of young droppers. Start your training with more droppers than you
think you will need and work diligently with your young droppers until they
do exactly what you demand, letter perfect. Any droppers that cause trouble
or fail to respond to your training should be discontinued with; as I said
previously, they will only cause aggravation. Now I know this may seem
frustrating, I too started in this game to fly Tipplers for hours in the
sky, not muck about for hours with droppers on the ground, but a well
trained and responsive team of droppers will ultimately save you time and
frustration when you start working with your Tipplers and this will make
your Tipplering experience more enjoyable.

Now you are probably thinking, so he lost one round, after that his droppers
were trained and all must have been well this was not so. In my dropper
selection I had made yet another mistake. There are as many different
opinions on number, type, and management of droppers as there are
practitioners of the Tippler game. What I did not realize is that this is
because effective droppers vary depending on your location, management
style, and family of Tipplers. A fancier with a treeless location on a hill
and calm Tipplers that dont rake much may be able to drop his birds well
with only two or three droppers fluttering about on the loft roof. With a
more nervous family of Tipplers, this same fancier might need more droppers,
or even droppers that flew up, joined the Tipplers, and brought them down.

These were the sort of droppers I needed, but not the sort I had. I
purchased droppers with the idea that they would fly from me to the loft and
back for treat seeds (which I did train them to do) and these 4 birds would
bring my Tipplers down. This in no way accounted for my location or the
family of Tipplers I was flying. My loft was located in my backyard which
was about 25 feet square. On all sides, trees and buildings at least 20 feet
tall fenced my yard. My loft was only visible if my kit was immediately
above it. This meant that my Tipplers, who raked quite well, rarely, even as
they circled to land, had my loft in view. It also meant that there were
ample hiding places for hawks to ambush my landing Tipplers and this made
them nervous. As the Tipplers rarely saw my loft, all the droppers
fluttering about achieved was to hang out the meal sign for the local hawks
who would come and prey upon either the fluttering droppers or the landing
Tipplers.

At the end of my brief foray into the Tippler game, I had six young Tipplers
that I would fly. I was done with any thought of competition and flew my six
birds in the morning, which was the most convenient time for my working
schedule, and had them fed such that they would fly for about an hour. My
droppers, light colored, trained to fly to and from the loft roof were gone;
instead I had two blue check racing pigeons. Those racing pigeons, even
though they flew too fast for the Tipplers to keep up with and were dark
colored, were far more effective droppers than my well-trained team of light
colored flutterers. The racing pigeons would fly for ~30 minutes. So, 30
minutes in to my Tipplers flight, I would release the racing pigeons.

For half an hour they would fly in, out, and around the kit of Tipplers and
then, when they tired and landed, the Tipplers would follow them down. No
longer did I spend hours madly working droppers off the loft top, trying to
time their flight to precisely when my kit was overhead. No longer did I
lose birds daily to the hawks. I had much better control over my Tipplers
and flying them was much more pleasurable. At this point, however, I was on
my way out the door of the Tippler game and in another month my Tipplers
were gone. The lessons, however, remain.

When it came to droppers I made two critical mistakes 1) I did not have
droppers present and trained before I had young Tipplers to settle and 2)
when I finally did get and train droppers, I chose birds that, though they
conformed well to advice I had received from books and other flyers, were
completely unsuited to my location. In retrospect, before my first round of
Tipplers hatched I should have had a working kit of 6 or 8 calm, intelligent
birds flying well off my loft for 20 or 30 minutes. Birds that fly longer
might result in a DQ by keeping the Tipplers aloft and birds that fly for
only a few minutes might not be aloft long enough to attract the attention
of the Tipplers. In addition, one or two loft top droppers would have been
helpful to instill confidence in all the birds, both Tipplers and droppers,
dropping to the loft roof. With this two pronged, pre-trained dropper system
I would have had much greater control of my Tipplers and much less
frustration.