Oh, Chinquapin
I miss you so
This first January
Without your trial Read more
Chinquapin Second Week January
Blog
The Florida Championship
The Florida Championship is no more
A glorious trial is over forever
Like all things conceived by mortal man
It had a beginning and has come to an end
It was unique in many ways
Embodied the best of the field trial game
Wild quail on sloping prairie-like land
Wire grass cover over sand Read more
Field Trials — Gentleman’s Sport?
Pointing dog birthdays always occur in the first week of January. True or False? Read more
Sallie
“Where there is wealth there is envy.”
That was a favorite saying of both Ben Reach and Sam Nixon MD, the curmudgeons. In their long years practicing law and medicine in Albany, Georgia, northern anchor of the quail belt that stretched south to Tallahassee, they had seen many examples. Read more
Happy Day
My grandson shot his first grouse today
Over the point of my son’s Trixie
Daughter of Shadow Oak Bo
And the best we have owned in sixty years Read more
Two Slate Signs at Livingston Place
The Continental Open All-Age Championship
Livingston Place in 2002
Cindy Crawford Top Qualifier
Barshoe Esquire Champion
Dale Bush and Sherry Ebert judged
Cindy’s qualifying race for Jimmy Edmundson
On the day’s last course
Was spectacular Read more
When January Comes
When January comes
I will be here at home
First time since 1994
Won’t be at Chinquapin
The second week
Of that cold month at home
I spent in North Florida
From 1995 through 2022 Read more
A Brace at Ames
The year was 1938. The place was the Ames Plantation at Grand Junction, Tennessee, 55 miles east of the Mississippi River at Memphis. The event was the National Bird Dog Championship. It had been held most years since 1896, and here since 1901. The subject of this story is the winning performance and the players in it, canine, equine and human. Read more
The Worst Injustice
“What was the worst injustice you ever saw committed in field trials?” Sam asked Ben on a rainy Friday afternoon as Ben poured them drams of The Macallan in Ben’s library-conference room. Sam was looking to hear a lively story to end his depression after a tough week with patients.
“That’s easy. It was Bernie Matthys’s banning of Miller’s White Powder and Ferrel Miller from field trials.”
Read more
War
Wars between son-in-law and mother-in-law are endemic in our culture, perhaps pandemic in wealthy families and especially when son is Dixie-born and bred and mother-in-law a Yankee. So it was between Eloise Crump of Boston and Doug Hall of Thomasville, husband of Eloise’s daughter Charlotte. Read more