Al Hart was a sport, by every definition. And he could afford to be. He owned vast Texas oil and gas interests, plus vaster Texas surface lands, more important in his mind, for they nurtured what he loved best, quail, bobwhites and blues. Owned vast acreages in South Texas, West Texas including the Panhandle, and Central Texas, all the quail regions. Owned them the Old Fashioned Way, by inheritance.
To manage his quail hunting, Al employed Buck Branch, a Texas Bird Dog Man in the Jack Harper-Tony Terrell-Dean Lord-Gary Pinalto tradition.
Buck had at the ready for Al at all times a string of thirty gritty pointers, broke and impervious to the harsh hazards of Texas quail hunting, including heat, cold, cactus, mesquite, shinnery, rattlesnakes, javelinas, feral hogs and drug toting wetbacks. Plus he had in training at all times puppies and derbies to replenish the string. His was a dream job for a fellow like him, he would tell you over a long-neck Lone Star at a rough-and-tumble saloon in any of those regions where he could likely be found after sunset, looking for conversation or a line dancing partner or both.
On the day in question Buck was parked with the F-350 diesel dually Al supplied him at a pump in a Falfarrias truck stop filling the saddle tanks and checking oil and tire pressure when he was approached by an unsavory gaunt stranger with an unmistakable prison pallor. “Can I show you somethin,’’ said the stranger.
Buck saw parked on a corner at the back of the truckstop a battered twenty-year-old pickup with a plywood dog box in the bed and Georgia license plates. From these clues he guessed what was coming. He walked with the stranger to the pickup, idling roughly Buck suspected because the gaunt one feared he could not restart it.
The stranger opened the door of the box and out stepped a White Dog Adonis, a pointer unmistakably of the breeding of Ferrel Miller, aka The King, or one of his disciples in the West-Kentucky Bird Dog Mafia. The dog blinked from the bright sunlight, having been awakened from its snooze on the hay in the box. He stood regally, and looked around, wagging his tail. He appeared to Buck, an expert appraiser, to be young, vigorous, and likely broke and in shape. Tell-tale briar scratches on the front of his long muscled legs and his nose told Buck this.
“How much?” Buck asked.
“Two Thousand,” said the gaunt one.
“Four Hundred cash, no questioned asked,” Buck countered.
The gaunt one nodded slowly and Buck reached for his wallet after looking around the truck and the lot to be sure he had not been setup to be mugged. Buck lead the White Dog by the collar to his truck.
“What’s his name,” Buck yelled over his shoulder.
“Don’t know,” yelled the gaunt one as he exited the truck stop headed north on bald tires.
Buck guessed the gaunt one had picked up the dog on a road around a Georgia quail plantation or a field trial venue. The story was sadder than that. The dog had been sold by the dog man on a plantation newly addicted to opioids after over-prescription by a Dr. Feel Good following a horse-fall injury (that dog man told his boss the White Dog had been run over and killed on a road adjacent to his plantation). The gaunt one stole the dog from the buyer from the plantation dog man, out of the dog box on his truck parked at the North Florida road house where the first illicit sale had been closed.
Buck wasted no time trying out the White Dog. Al was away attending field trials, his new fascination, with the pro handler he’d latched onto. Buck meanwhile was entertaining Buck’s friends with South Texas quail hunts.
Buck worked the White Dog first from the hunting truck, then from horseback with a mounted scout. The White Dog was comfortable either way and on whistle would cast to the front at all-age range. He found birds, was steady to wing and shot, and showed no holes.
Buck took him to Al’s vet at Brownsville. He was heart-worm free and had sound hips. “How old, you guess?” Buck asked. “Three or less.”
For two weeks, Buck hunted him daily. He was top dog every morning and afternoon. He stayed steady to shot when birds were dropped in front of his points.
Buck called Al. “Well, Mr. Al, I think I’ve got here what you are looking for.” Al had, like all newly addicted-to-trials owners, become obsessed with having a contender qualified to compete in the National Championship. This required two first-place wins in specified stakes of an hour or more. Al had a couple of half-qualified dogs, but that was all.
Buck explained the White Dog. “But you have no registration papers for him,” Al responded. “But don’t you have a derby that’s all white? This White Dog can just assume his identity, can’t he? “ A long silence followed while Al absorbed the possibility.
“Ship him up here.”
Al’s field trial handler was soon enthralled with the White Dog. He entered it, using the identity of the white derby, in the last two qualifying trials, both scheduled to be run in California. It won both. Buck had traveled to scout the White Dog and Al had ridden front for it. Only a week remained before the National Championship’s Saturday night drawing.
The White Dog drew the last brace. Forty-two were drawn. Al arranged the use of a large hunting spread near Rienzi, Mississippi for the White Dog to be worked on (both his field trial handler and Buck had stressed the importance of acclimating the White Dog to local scenting conditions). White Dog did better each workout. Three days before it was scheduled to run on the Ames Plantation the White Dog had his last workout. It scored eight flawless finds and showed no fatigue. Buck and the Field trial handler agreed it should be worked no more, just roaded a half-hour the last two days.
Finally, the appointed day arrived. Fifteen hundred riders were gathered for the breakaway. Performances up to now had been mediocre or worse. The best were a four-find and a three-find one, the latter with a better ground race and finish.
The Secretary made the introductions and thanked all who had worked hard to put on the trial. Al, Buck and the handler were as nervous as could be. Finally, they heard the fateful “let ‘em go” from the Senior Judge.
White Dog commenced a textbook race. At the end of his first hour he had scored four times, each at the end of a long sweeping cast to the front. No scouting had been required. The bracemate had been picked up, having scored no finds.
Then fate (or justice) intervened. A rider identified himself to Al as a representative of the American Field. He explained that a question had been raised by an individual of impeccable credentials about the White Dog’s identity. He refused to name the questioner, and explained that to clear the air, arrangements had been made with the testing lab to take a swab from White Dog’s mouth after the race and to test it on the spot against the DNA report on file with the Field for Al’s white derby. Al protested but to no avail. The procedure had been approved by the club’s directors.
Al explained what had happened to Buck, who relayed it to the handler when they next watered the White Dog. Buck had a plan which he explained to the handler fifteen minutes later. The handler concurred it was their only chance to escape disaster. Buck huddled with his assistant in the Texas quail hunting operation who dropped out of the gallery. Buck did not tell Al of the plan.
Meanwhile the White Dog continued its story book race. With fifteen minutes remaining it had scored seventeen finds, one less than White Knight in its storied derby-year race in 1961, still talked of. The gallery was silent, save for the clomp of hooves and jangle of bit chains. White Dog scored one more, tying him with White Knight and making him all but a sure thing to be the first derby winner of the National Championship since Mary Montrose in 1918.
Buck’s plan would require perfect timing. White Dog would need to be in sight of the judges when time was called, but far distant from them. Then Buck would ride hard to gather and harness him. But having done so in the woods, he would put him on the pommel of his saddle and ride hell for leather for the nearest public road where his Texas assistant would be waiting with truck running to drive straight through to Falfarrias.
Not since Nathan Bedford Forrest had a rider traveled so fast on the Ames Plantation. Ten minutes after White Dog’s heat ended it was in a crate in the bed of the F-350 bound for Texas. It would live out a long happy life there anonymously as Al Hart’s Top Hunting Dog. Al soon tired of trials, but not of Texas quail hunting.
Buck’s story was that he had tracked the White Dog to the highway, arriving just in time to see two thieves put it in a truck and speed away. He was not close enough to read a license plate number but close enough to recognize it as Georgia issue. Of course few believed his story, especially after word spread of the Field’s intended after-race DNA test.
And so the White Dog was named National Champion, and the only derby one save Mary Montrose, though like the Major League Home Run Hitters of the doping years, an asterisk would always be beside his name in the history books.