Here we go
Three hours down
Please birds move
Come out of the woods
If you stay put
Where you roosted
In that stick stuff
My dog won’t point you
Read more
The National — As Seen By A Handler
Blog
Luck
Billy Kane had qualified Wheelman in the last one-hour open all-age run before the National Championship entries closed. He had not expected to. The first qualifying win had come two seasons before, and he had not expected that one either. Won it when the best dog’s brace-mate failed to back and it went with the thief after the birds. But here he was approaching the Ames Plantation, never expecting to be here. But his usual bad luck returned. Read more
Going to Ames
So your dog is qualified
And you’re going to Grand Junction
To run in The National Championship
The one and only
To run on the Ames Plantation
Where for a century and a quarter
The continent’s best bird dog has been yearly crowned
And where bird dog stories true and fiction abound
Read more
End of a Partnership
John Ford had worked as an over-the-road-for-the-public-all-age pointing dog handler his last twenty years. For the last ten he had partnered on the road (“helpin’ each other,” the system was called) and for summer prairie training with Billy Green, whose career had mirrored John’s, the difference being John hailed from Georgia, Billy from Alabama. Each was forty-three, married with two teen-age children, and with a hard-working wife, John’s a nurse, Billy’s a sales rep for internet business services. Read more
The Call
The call came as a shock to Ben Reach, though he knew it could come any time. Carle Dixon was dead at age sixty, had fallen dead from his horse while handling in the North Dakota Open All-Age at Columbus. The cause was a burst brain aneurism, detected three years before during a cat scan following a horse wreck while checking for a concussion and inoperable. Read more
The Boys of the Road
The boys of the road
Follow a circuit
That starts way up north
As summer is ending
They’ve been up there
Since mid July
Training young bird dogs
And young riding horses Read more
Chinquapin Immortals
I reflect on Chinquapin After twenty-seven Florida Championships Reported there From 1995 through 2022 A piece of earth crafted From lime-rock and sand Covered in wire grass Jack oaks and sparse pines Sculpted uneven by The Master With an all-age bird dog in mind Its courses laid out in 1969 By Fred Arant nickname Goochy Since then it has served As a place to hunt quail And for a week Read more
A Simple Solution
Rigging a field trial was a strategy old as the game. And rigging the drawing so the rigger’s entry drew the best course was a favorite strategy of many. Buck Eanes did it every year at the Deep South Championship, run on his vast cotton lands in Mississippi. Read more
T. Jack and Ted and the Florida Championship
Many a friendship has been inspired by a mutual love of bird dogs. My favorite story of such a friendship is that of T. Jack Robinson and Edward L. “Ted” Baker. That friendship spawned many others, and led to the breeding and development of legendary All-Age and Shooting Dog Champions over six decades and a premier wild bird field-trial Championship celebrating its 50th Anniversary. Read more
Ben Reach’s Secret Crusade
Ben had been waging a secret crusade for many years. The crusade was to light the field trial fire in a few who could afford to help the sport.
The crusade often seemed hopeless. Few who could afford to help had any interest in trials or trial dogs. Time and again Ben saw very wealthy buyers of quail plantations with no interest in field trials. They were only interested in shooting birds. And they were told trial dogs were worthless for hunting by other plantation owners with no experience with trial dogs. Read more