A Simple Solution

Rigging a field trial was a strategy old as the game. And rigging the drawing so the rigger’s entry drew the best course was a favorite strategy of many. Buck Eanes did it every year at the Deep South Championship, run on his vast cotton lands in Mississippi.

The lands held six one-hour continuous courses. Of these, the second was by far the best for several reasons. First, number of quail coveys on it. Twice as many as any other. Next, terrain. Well drained, gently sloping, several places ideal for showing the dog to the judges on a long cast with an inviting, forward leading, edge lined with bird-holding cover. Finally, a finishing stretch with a rise at the start where judges could sit their unmoving mounts and watch a dog cast ahead half a mile out of sigh at time.

Invariably, Buck’s entries, usually two or three, drew the second course.

The handlers who customarily entered their strings at the Deep South included those with a dog qualified for the National Championship, because the trial commenced two weeks before the National. This made it a natural warm up, and a place for Piney-Woods-based handlers to acclimate their dogs to scenting condition like those on the Ames Plantation.

Every year handlers grumbled among themselves about the inevitability of Buck Eanes’ entries drawing the second course. This year one handler vowed to teach Buck a lesson. That handler was Will Greer. He started early in the fall — half of the season by taking to dinner at each trial he attended one other handler, paying for the drinks and the meal, and selling his guest on his plan.

Unbeknownst to all his targets, Will had tried another plan the year before and it had failed. He had secretly ridden through woods to the end of the second course intending to Shanghai Buck’s entry just as it finished its race. But he found that Buck had two other riders waiting for his entry to finish and to be sure Buck’s scout caught his entry right after it finished.

So what was the plan Will Greer had come up with to thwart Buck’s rigged drawing? Very simple. Whichever two handlers drew the first course ahead of Buck’s second-course-drawn entry would at the last moment scratch those entries, forcing Buck to run his on the first course. It took only one year to break Buck of rigging the draw at his trial.