Blog

Memories

March 18, 2023 | Remembrances | Comments
With no Florida Championship to report this year, I have turned to re-reading memoirs of great field trial handlers, namely Jack Harper, Ed Mack Farrior and Leon Covington (via his biographer, John Chriswell). Their careers spanned 6 decades (1919 through 1960s). I knew only Mr. Ed Mack, and what a privilege! Read more

Andy

March 17, 2023 | Great All-Age Dogs, Joe Hicks, Joe Hicks | Comments
It is not hard to find joy and sorrow joined close together in our game. In fact, they are a recurring theme in the human-canine dramas that tie together men and women and great field trial bird dogs.  As I reflect on the dramas surrounding the Florida Open All-Age Championship over the twenty-seven years I reported it, none is so poignant as that of Chinquapin Andy, Florida Champion in  2009 and 2010, his trainer-handler, Joe Hicks, and his owners, Ted Baker and T. Jack Robinson.  Read more

A Derby

March 10, 2023 | Bird Dogs, Short Stories | Comments
In the hearts of true all-age pointing dog devotees, nothing is so important as a talented derby. A derby is a two-year-old.  What defined a talented derby: potential for greatness as an all-age, or adult, competitor. And greatness in pointing dogs involved many talents. But the one always recognized: excitement, the ability to produce it.  Read more

Hunting Grouse

February 24, 2023 | Poetry | Comments
Hunting grouse is a spiritual thing As every grouse hunter knows And when you loose your dog  And strike out on foot behind it The third with you is always God Read more

A Prairie Plot

February 9, 2023 | Short Stories | Comments
Willie Green and Alvin Roop had been rivals throughout their careers. Home based a hundred miles apart east and west of the Chattahoochee opposite Columbus, less than that in Manitoba in summer, they competed as handlers on the all-age pointing dog circuit. The year was 1963, and Willie and Alvin were forty years old.  Willie’s scout was Booty Blevins, Alvin’s was Sam Williams. Both were black men, ages about the same. They loved their jobs and were good at them.  Read more

Scout

February 3, 2023 | Short Stories | Comments
They rumbled into the trial grounds in the familiar old red Dodge two-ton, found a depression to back into. The scout, a black man, eased out the driver-side door and let the tall tailgate down, allowing the four dog horses to walk down it and off the wood-floored bed onto welcome grassy turf. They had driven through the night from the last trial where they’d handled a dog in the final brace, leaving with no share of the purse. They needed a share of this one or they’d be looking for a loan to cover gas (and motor oil) money to get home to south Alabama.  Read more

Four Men Two Dogs One Spare Tire

January 25, 2023 | Quail Championship Invitational, Short Stories | Comments
They were two-man teams of rivals. Some thought enemies, but they were not. They were famous, in a very small, obscure world. Each was a trainer-handler or a scout of all-age pointing dogs.  Each handler worked with a scout, usually a black man, who traveled with him in a two-ton stock-bed truck they drove from trial to trial hauling the horses they rode to handle and scout off of and the dogs in the string of pointers (and occasionally a setter) they entered in the trials.  Read more