Category: Field Trial Recollections

Memories of the Free-For-All

January 17, 2025 | National Free-For-All Championship, Remembrances | Comments
It was my privilege to report the National Free-For-All Championship at Sedgefields, Safford, Alabama a few years just before its discontinuance as a three-hour stake. It was unique, and its loss was a blow to the sport.  First run in 1916 by the National Field Trial Club, it was first won by John Proctor (HOF 1954), which had won the National Championship the week before after a two-hour second series. Read more

Remembering the Florida

January 10, 2025 | Continental Championship, Florida Open All-Age Championship | Comments
This week marks the third anniversary of the last Florida Open All-Age Championship, conducted the second week of January at Chinquapin Farm through 2022. Started as the Suwannee River Open All-Age in 1969, becoming a Championship ten years later in 1979, the trial stood for excellence, attracting the top all-age handlers and owners throughout its history. Key to its success was the dedication and generosity of its sponsor, Edward L. (“Ted”) Baker.  Read more

Once Upon a Time

December 18, 2024 | Field Trial Recollections | Comments
Once upon a time, about 1990, a young man from Albany, Georgia, had a great job. He was dog trainer and hunt manager on one of the south’s largest Yankee Quail Plantations. His father was manager of the plantation, his brother the manager of its pecan orchards and other agricultural operations. He had won two years in a row the Yankee Trial, the Owner’s Trial of the Georgia-Florida Field Trial Club, composed of the multimillionaire owners of the quail plantations between Albany and Tallahassee. The Club has since 1916 sponsored each President’s Day (except in war years) a one-day trial for wagon dogs from the plantations.  Read more

My Thanksgiving

November 27, 2024 | Ferrel Miller, Poetry | Comments
This Thanksgiving I give thanks For the opportunities To watch great all-age dogs Looking back on those years I give thanks for the chances God gave me to write up The best dogs of those days Read more

Last Trip to Grand Junction

February 4, 2024 | National Championship, Short Stories | Comments
He woke alone in the  trailer, a single-wide on concrete blocks on a rented half-acre lot on a dirt road off Route 32 ten miles east of Leesburg. Jess Clark looked at the calendar, taped on the refrigerator door, where he marked off the days with a pencil stub on a string, and read in the first un-Xd block, “February 11, Sat.”  He turned the left burner eye on the two-burner stove to high to heat water for coffee and put the enameled steel pot on it. There is something I must do today, he told himself, and strained to remember. Read more