Blog

Minerva’s Rescue

Minerva was a pointer, seven years old. She was handled by Arch Reams, age seventy-five, and the last of a breed of handlers of the old school, who rode the pace set by the judges and mostly in sight of them and let a dog hunt ahead and make its pattern, hopefully to the front. He was quiet, sang with a voice Minerva heard but did not shout or ride frantically to turn her or see where she coursed over a hill ahead. Read more

A Good Bird Dog

A good bird dog Is a gift from God If you get one You owe it care You owe it time When young to learn To stay with you And search the front Read more

A Run-Off

Two handlers wake before dawn And roll from their lumpy beds In a field trial motel near the grounds Their tasks for the day are a run-off Then a two-hundred-mile-haul in their duallys pulling trailers They wish the judges had flipped a coin Given one the Championship, the other R-U Champ But no, they must instead have this Waste a day And throw everyone’s plans in a mess They grab Read more

A Pup From Kentucky, Part I

There is a long tradition of father-son apprenticeship in the pointing dog trainer-handler trade. Jake and Bobby were part of that tradition. Jake had been a for-the-public trainer-handler four decades, taught his son Bobby who scouted for him. Jake had turned his string and owners over to Bobby five years ago. Now Jake, age seventy, assisted Bobby with puppies and derbies, gave advice occasionally, sometimes welcomed, more often not. Read more

Amazon and Me

For many years, I engaged Amazon as print-on-demand (POD) printer, publisher and internet sales distributor of my books. It began when Amazon acquired CreateSpace, a small privately-owned pioneer in the POD business I patronized. Amazon changed the brand name to KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). How I ceased to be represented by Amazon and was banned from its vast retail internet distribution network is a bizarre tale of what can happen to a small fry in the digital age. Fortunately, my writings are a second job for me and not depended on for my daily bread. Read more

A Good Deed Rewarded

At the end of this day, number five, sixty pointers would have each hunted an hour in braces. Before the last brace was released, the judges announced that two of the dogs that had gone down earlier in the week should be ready to go down together at the end of this last scheduled brace in a call-back, its length to be, “Until ordered up.” Read more

Woodcock

I love woodcock pure and simple Not because they are tasty or pretty But for other virtues aplenty They are amazing for their hippy life style And courage in flying many miles  Read more

A Hiring Choice

Ben Reach was often asked for advice by quail plantation owners on hiring decisions. It was not for legal advice but people advice, or in modern parlance, Human Resources advice. Ben was known as a sound judge of human beings, of character and management skill, particularly in the quail plantation realm. For a person to manage traditional quail hunts, horseback and mule-wagon type, the first consideration was safety. This required skill and judgment and what Ben and Sam called First Responder attitude. A person who never lets anything distract them from safety. Character was an equally important trait. Lack of it had ended the careers of many, in plantation management as in all jobs in requiring honesty, and that was all jobs. It was March. Fly fishing for panfish was much on the curmudgeons’ minds. Ron Silver, owner of Noyankees Plantation, had asked for a meeting with Ben (his lawyer for Georgia-centric problems) and Sam (his personal physician while in Georgia). In summer Ron lived in Massachusetts where he had made and still invested his considerable fortune. He had in Boston other lawyers and physicians. Read more