Blog

The Moment

October 26, 2022 | Field Trials, Short Stories | Comments

There comes a moment in every good field trial bird dog’s life when it realizes its purpose: to win field trials with its handler. To that moment, it may understand its handler’s desire to have it do his or her will, but not the purpose of the handler’s desire. But the moment a dog comes to understand what it and its handler are trying to accomplish together, is the magic moment. Read more

For Want of a Nail

October 19, 2022 | Other Things, Remembrances | Comments

My career reporting field trials is over with the discontinuance of the Florida Open All-Age Championship following Ted Baker’s death. I was honored to report it from 1995 through 2022. Over those years I reported many others, including the Continental Derby and All-Age Championships, the National Open Free-For-All and National Derby Championships, the National Amateur Free-For-All Championship, the Lee County trial, and, most memorably, the Quail Championship Invitational at Paducah from 1996 through 2006. Read more

New Professions

October 11, 2022 | Short Stories | Comments

Thanks to Booty Blevins’ smart planning, he and Ike Eanes were now employed on Bent Pine Plantation, Ike as Manager and head dog and horse man and huntsman, Booty as Ike’s assistant. They were replacing others who had accepted similar positions on other Yankee quail plantations in the Spring Shuffle of 2024. Richard Brammer had one unfulfilled ambition, to gain membership in the Georgia-Florida Field Trial Club, an exclusive by invitation club for owners of quail plantations between Albany and Tallahassee. Richard had great influence in financial circles everywhere, having led leading venture capital and private equity firms based in Boston before his retirement. But in two years living retired at Bent Pine he had yet to gain membership. He was recently told by a sage of the quail belt that his best chance at admission lay in a large contribution to Tall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy Foundation for its endowment. Read more

Bound to Happen

October 5, 2022 | Ben Reach, National Championship | Comments

After Ben Reach read it on the internet he said to Sam at Breakfast next morning at Millie’s Diner, “It was bound to happen eventually. I wonder if it has happened before and no one ever knew.” The “it” was this. And the “it” has a long and short version. The short one: the National Champion bird dog of 2023 was discovered to be an impostor. Read more

FWF

September 29, 2022 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Ben and Sam often reflected over drams of The Macallan on FWF, their acronym for Families Will Fight. Their venerable practices of law and medicine had long been windows on human nature, sometimes heartening, often depressing. In their professional practices, both curmudgeons instinctively fought to mitigate FWF, with varying degrees of success. One thing they knew: no one won family fights. An apparent victory always became a defeat or at best a draw. Read more

What Kind of Man

September 22, 2022 | Other Things, Ted Baker | Comments

Many folks have asked me, What sort of man was Ted Baker? An incident during the 2015 Florida Championship answers the question eloquently. At the end of the running, judges Cecil Rester and Gary Lester named Utah’s Red Rock Express Champion based on a big six-find finals race. Read more

Three Years That Mattered Most

September 14, 2022 | Remembrances | Comments

Having reached an age (84) when we tend to reflect on our past, three long-ago years stand out in my memory. I know the start and end dates of those years precisely: November 25, 1950, and February 24, 1954. The first was the day the Great Appalachian Storm of 1950 struck, the second the day of my father’s death from injuries in a car crash. You can learn all about the storm on Wikipedia. Read more

Hunting Companions

September 8, 2022 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

A covey lifted at Cyrus’s feet and flew out bunched and low. Cyrus fired quickly and Ben and Sam on the wagon saw a bird fall. At the moment of the blast all heard a yelp. The pointing dog’s bracemate had been backing from heavy cover thirty-five yards ahead in the line of Cyrus’s hasty shot. Cyrus had broken another of Sonny Eanes’ recited rules of the hunt: “Know where every one and every animal is before you shoot.” Read more

My Life as a Field Trial Reporter

August 30, 2022 | Other Things, Remembrances | Comments

My life as a field trial reporter began in 1995 when I was 57. Before that I had been a farmer (1950-1960) and a lawyer (1961-present). Reporter was by far my most satisfying profession. Why? Because it was fantasy. It allowed me to ride horseback and watch world-class bird dogs perform and compete across beautiful hunting grounds, handled and scouted by professionals seeking perfection, then write accounts of what I had seen. What could be more fun than that? For me, nothing. Read more

The Key

August 25, 2022 | Short Stories | Comments

The Sunday following Thanksgiving, Paducah, Kentucky. The six handlers of the twelve entries gathered at seven am at the clubhouse of the West Kentucky Wildlife Management Area. Rain poured down relentlessly, as it had through the night. There would be no morning running, likely no afternoon. Breakfast was being served by a local church group. The handlers filled their plates, quickly emptied them, then gathered around the roaring fireplace, glad of a day’s rest for their entries and themselves. Read more