I look back
Across decades
Of a grand life
With joy and gratitude
And for no part more
Than my bird dog field trial life
Which began modest but became grand
When I began
My reporting career in 1995
At the Florida Championship
The luckiest day of my sporting life that lasted til 2022
From that first day on
I realized the joy
Of watching bird dogs
Search for feathered game before a horse across God’s earth
Then to go to bed
Dream of what I’d just seen
Rise before dawn and write it down
Email it with photos to the American Field
On the wire grass and sand of Chinquapin
The piney woods hills of Dixie now Livingston Place
The pastures of Paducah round the nuclear plant
The prairies of Columbus North Dakota and Tulsa Oklahoma
The two great Sedgefields of Alabama
East at Union Springs and West beyond Selma
Where Maytag and Sage and Jimmy Hinton hired George Hardin and Clyde Morton
then Billy and Billy Wayne
And on Enon and Sehoy
In Ohio at Kildeer Plains
Where Pheasants cackled as they flew
Until trials were banned and allowed no more
Yes all across this great land of ours
Where bird dogs hunted followed by mounted men
In search of game birds to point and watch fly away
To be found and pointed again another day
In the greatest sport for the soul of a man