Ben Reach found himself in a new role at the Deep South Quail Championship being run at Knotty Pine Plantation. He had gone expecting just to ride in the gallery, but discovered on arrival that the dog truck driver had failed to show, so Ben volunteered for the job.
The plantation provided a nicely appointed four-wheel-drive hunting truck with ten cage-type dog boxes and above them bench seats for eight human riders. Ben had the cab to himself. The judges instructed handlers to deliver their GPS tracker-receivers to Ben to keep in the truck-cab since rain was forecast during the running.
The temptation proved more than Ben could withstand. Ten minutes into the first brace Ben turned on the two trackers entrusted to him and began to follow the courses of the dogs. He was fascinated by the ability to see on the tracker screens just where the dogs were coursing every stride. It overwhelmed him with joy. He knew the grounds like his own back yard, having hunted and trialed here most of his life (Knotty Pine was owned by a long-time client and friend, Oscar Biddle of Philadelphia, whose family had owned the plantation four generations, having bought it for an average of $6 an acre from cotton farmers in the 1880s).
Ben was technology illiterate, but his pal Sam Nixon MD was the opposite. Sam was up on all the latest digital and GPS gadgets, including the Garmin devices. Ben called Sam on his mobile phone and after noon Sam joined him in the cab of the dog truck. He would ride there the rest of the trial which lasted five days.
Two days after the Championship ended there mysteriously appeared on an anonymous blog Sam shared with a few other technology- savvy seniors mapped printouts of all the Deep South Championship braces, with dots showing just where the contestants had hunted, including the elapsed times in seconds and including the pauses for finds, flushing and UPs. Most fascinating were the finds undetected where the dog was not found by the scout and the dog was ruled out of judgment .
Ben got a call from Bernie’s designee inquiring and Ben feigned ignorance. The posted printouts were the gossip of the field trial world briefly. That week was the highlight of Ben’s and Sam’s year.