I remember every hunt
And the dogs that searched that day
For the quail
Lurking in the cover
In Sussex Dinwiddie and Southampton
I remember Sussex best
Where the peanuts and the pines
The soybeans and the swamps
Fed the coveys and hid the singles when they flew
Especially the cutovers
With their loblolly seedlings ankle high
Weeds between and mistletoe
Atop the line trees tall and straight and
Six feet round breast high
Lines marked with paint stripes
Red for Gray blue for Butler white for Jarratt
For Continental Can or Chesapeake
The trees were marked with metal squares
At the corners
Deer hunt clubs
Leased acreage
And on their hunt days
We stayed off them
From ‘73 when I met Joe
We hunted quail there one day or two each week
Behind Joe’s and Denny’s pointers
Descended from a single sire of legend from the 50s
Lucky by name he came as a pup from Zion’s Crossroads
From dog jockey Mr. Perkins’ kennel
Thin and wormy and a man-shy runoff
Black head and high tail betraying field trial parents
But something about him appealed to Joe: especially his price
(Joe liked a bargain)
“Take him home and send me 50 bucks if he turns out”
Mr. Perkins said (he thought he wouldn’t)
Joe brought him home to Stony Creek
Turned him loose like all the rest
Through puppy spring and summer he ran free
Chasing everything that crawled ran or flew
Through fields woods and swamps round Joe’s house
Joe saw he had the search and smiled
In fall Joe put him in the dog box
Turned him loose with the broke dogs
He hunted wide and fastest
Put to wing up front
Covey after covey
When the last day of the season came
Joe judged the time had come to break him
So he gave him lesson #9
And stung him once
He never after bumped a bird
Much less a covey
That day Joe and his pal Frank Slade named him Lucky
Lucky to have dodged
The many cars and trucks
And countless trains
That sped close by Joe’s house night and day bound north and south
Lucky hunted every day all day
Pointed coveys and single
Found dead and retrieved with a soft mouth
Backed on sight without command
Circled bean fields any size
Found coveys feeding on the edge
Or in the nearby briars
Lucky became that day
Joe’s top dog for a decade and a half
His reputation spread
Cross the county
Soon his get were everywhere
Finding quail for owners
In the years when we had lots
And many men walked out to hunt them
Joe was Joseph D. Prince (1925-1997)
Denny was Bernard M. Poole Jr. (1943-2005)
I loved them both and spoke at their funerals