Blog

Just For Fun

October 23, 2019 | Ben Reach | Comments
Ben Reach found himself in a new role at the Deep South Quail Championship being run at Knotty Pine Plantation. He had gone expecting just to ride in the gallery, but discovered on arrival that the dog truck driver had failed to show, so Ben volunteered for the job. Read more

The Callimores

October 7, 2019 | Short Stories | Comments
The father, Jim, worked at S&M Milling for minimum wages, unloading and loading hundred-pound burlap sacks of grain hauled in by farmers for milling and mixing into animal feed. Jim and his wife had sixteen children, according to rumor. I knew only three, Billy, Freddy and Jean. Read more

Suspicion Unconfirmed

September 26, 2019 | Short Stories | Comments
Fred Barnes was a watcher. Little got by him. For the last two years he had been watching John Payne, a professional pointing dog handler, and his scout, Willie Blevins. Fred judged field trials a lot. Why? Because he had horses and a truck-trailer rig to haul them, and if he committed he showed, and he appeared to be without favorites among handlers or owners, pointers or setters. He was pleasant enough, stayed sober in daylight hours. Accepted only gas money to judge. He watched constantly the dogs under judgment. Did not chat or gather wool while judging. Rode every brace at the same pace. Read more

One Course Fiascos

September 16, 2019 | Short Stories | Comments
Most of us got our start with bird dogs foot hunting on farms where we grew up. For my generation there were hunt-able populations of quail on farms from Florida north to Indiana and grouse above and in mountains west of that, and of course quail and pheasants to the west. For the small percent of us attracted to pointing dog trials, it was the on-foot fun trials with a bird field and then the weekend one-course horseback trials that first captured our imaginations. Read more

Two Farmers, the Buck and the Boy

September 10, 2019 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments
Jake Todd and Buck Read had been adjoining farmers all their adult lives. Each was now approaching eighty. Blood enemies as well, most of those years. Why, you ask, and the question tells me you have no experience with their situation. To adjoin is to irritate, irk, agitate, infuriate. No myth is so untrue as that of rural tranquility. It exists only in the imagination of delusional city dwellers. Rural inhabitants know better. Read more

Gunny

September 4, 2019 | Bird Dogs, Remembrances | Comments
Ask a professional trainer-handler of pointing dogs to name his best dog ever and you will likely get an ambiguous or evasive answer. Not so from Jim Heckert, who broke into the pro ranks long ago and has been at it ever since while also managing quail shooting plantations, including Wire Grass at Albany, Georgia for Thomas Vail of Cleveland Plain Dealer fame and currently Cedar Grove Plantation at Clarksville, Virginia for my friend Will Pannill. Read more

Advice to a Young Lawyer (continued)

June 5, 2019 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments
It had been two years since Ben and Sam met with Rob Smith to discuss his next career move following his second judicial clerkship. Rob had decided to join a big Atlanta-based firm and become a litigator. Now he had asked to meet again with the curmudgeons. He had not told Joanne for what, and the curmudgeons as they waited for Rob to arrive we’re speculating. Read more

Farm Jobs I Did and Did Not Like

May 23, 2019 | Remembrances | Comments
My boyhood farm jobs started at age six with opening gates for my father to drive through in his 38 Chevy and spreading two-handful piles of salt at ten-foot intervals in hilltop pasture cow trails, then calling the stock in to savor it with, “Coo sheep, Coo, Soo Calf, Soo,” until they arrived on the run to lick the salt up and be counted and inspected. This job came every Sunday afternoon as my father, his friend Jack Atkinson, a fellow farmer and N&W Trainman, and I inspected the stock on both their farms. This job I loved. Read more