field trial

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A test for young, untried hunting dogs to determine their competence in pointing and retrieving.
• noun A trial of a new product in actual situations of use.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A contest between gun dogs
• noun A practical test, especially one conducted in the wild

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a test of young hunting dogs to determine their skill in pointing and retrieving
• noun a contest between gun dogs to determine their proficiency in pointing and retrieving
• noun a test of the performance of some new product under the conditions in which it will be used