Blog

2002 Florida Open All-Age Championship

Silverwood Captures Crown, Double Rebel Pearl Named Runner-Up In a race that will be retold as long as any who saw it can faintly remember, ten-year-old pointer multichampion Silverwood scorched the second course at Chinquapin Farms, scored four perfect finds and unleashed a spectacular finishing drive that carried him a mile beyond the usual finish to capture the Florida Open All-Age Crown for handler Robin Gates and owner Dr. Everett Crouch. Read more

The Last Dream

It was a dream he had started hundreds of times but never completed. Before now, the dream had always ended with his waking to reality. He was a pointing dog trainer-handler, one of hundreds that had since the 1870s eked out a living taking young dogs and molding them into useful workers for their owners, bird hunters or field trialers who as amateurs ran them in trials for amateurs. But what he aspired to was to find and mold a dog that he could handle as a pro to win major open field trials, including the ultimate, the National Bird Dog Championship, held each February at the Ames Plantation at Grand Junction, Tennessee. Read more

Races ~ 5

None who saw it Will forget it Silverwood’s hour at Chinquapin In January 2002 If an hour race Can be called magic This one was it Plus it was Hunter’s first year as scout The judges were Luke Weaver And Vernon Vance The bracemate Last year’s Champion Million Dollar Man Read more

Races ~ 4

Twelve hours Nine days Three Champion titles In the Quail Championship Invitational 1996, 1997, 1998 House’s Rain Cloud A record never to be challenged Consistency personified Read more

Paducah 1977

In his marvelous new book, The Invitational Champions, John Russell alludes thus to mysterious events: “The 1977 edition is one likely to be long remembered by those in attendance as events occurred both during the running and after hours that elicited plenty of conversation. Descriptions of all of the happenings vary with the telling and re-telling but suffice it to say that there were some memorable characters involved and not all of the events were suitable for this account.” In this John is a master of the understatement. Read more

The Secret Fund (Sequel to The Last Summer)

Readers will recall that in The Last Summer a lad named Jimmy got his bearings thanks to a summer of hard outdoor work with a bird dog trainer on a ranch in Montana. A year later Jimmy’s grandfather, who had financed that summer, called Ben Reach’s office and asked for an appointment. “Can you make it at about four on a Friday, and ask Dr. Sam to join us?” “Of course,” Joanne said with a smile. She suspected that the purpose of the grandfather’s appointment would be a reward to the curmudgeons for what the Montana summer had done for Jimmy in helping him become a man instead of an adolescent. Read more

Remembering the Quail Championship Invitational (1996 – 2006)

Reading John Russell’s splendid new book, The Invitational Champions, has brought back precious memories of the eleven years it was my privilege to report the trial at Paducah. My invitation to report came from John after my first report of the Florida Championship in 1995. I had attended the trial at Paducah as a spectator briefly in 1993 when Silver Bullett won his second crown, no Runner-Up. Judging in 1996 were Marshall Loftin, Bill Perry and Dr. Dorwin Hawthorne, and they shared with me generously their impressions of performances, which I sorely needed in light of my limited experiences watching all-age dogs. Read more

The Invitational Champions

The Invitational Champions By John P. Russell (Lu Lu Publishing 500 pages) John Russell has given the field trial sport a precious gift: a comprehensive history of the Quail Championship Invitational, the dream trial for the twelve best of the best held each Thanksgiving weekend, and its Champions. First held in 1941 and 1942 at Albany, Georgia and suspended for the War years, it was revived in 1964 by the West Kentucky Field Trial Club at the West Kentucky Wildlife Area grounds at Paducah which has since stewarded it through innumerable hardships despite having no wealthy patron members. It has survived on the love of a few dedicated individuals for a class all-age bird dog. For twenty of those years it was led by the author, whose dedication to its cause this reviewer observed for eleven of those years, while serving as reporter. Read more

The Last Summer

Bill Culp was sad. He had just retired, at age sixty eight, from his job as dog trainer on Mossy Swamp Plantation. For the first time in forty years, he would not be going North July 6 to train bird dogs on the prairie. In the earliest years he had gone as a helper to an all-age for-the-public pro handler, then as a pro handler himself, and the last twenty years as the trainer on this South Georgia shooting plantation. He told himself he had nothing to be sad about. He knew he was fortunate, was financially secure, unlike many who had “followed the dogs” and ended up at his age with nothing but arthritis from horse falls or worse. But the thought of not spending July, August and three weeks of September, his favorite part, on those limitless lands, not seeing the glorious sunrises and sunsets, not feeling the ceaseless winds on his face when they finally changed from blow torch to cool, then crisp at dawn, and again at the long day’s end, depressed him. Read more

A Reversal of Fortune

When Ben Reach heard Bill Bain had gone to work as dog trainer on Twisted Pine Plantation, he cringed. Bill had for many years been a for-the-public-over-the-road trainer-handler of all-age pointing dogs. He’d given it up to take the plantation job for the usual reason — economics. He’d found it impossible to make a living any longer, for his expenses had overwhelmed his revenue. He’d had bad luck of several sorts — best customer quit the game, two best dogs sustained disabling injuries, two others were taken from him by their owners who sensed his operation was collapsing. That had been the last straw for Bill. He’d sold his horses at the last trial he attended, returned the rest of his string of dogs to their owners, dropped off his horse trailer at the dealership that held the lien, done the same with his dually. That left him with only a ten-year-old midsize Dodge pickup and two sets of tack, which he took with him to Twisted Pine. Read more