Category: National Championship

Last Call

February 17, 2025 | National Championship, Poetry | Comments
’Twas at the National Championship in 20?? After all the entries ran and failed to make a case Not a single covey had been stood, bumped or chased The three distinguished judges were disgusted with the place At lunch they called a huddle to decide what now to do One had a flask of whiskey, one a flask of gin The third a batwing of brandy if you can believe that sin The senior judge said call ‘em back till we get one worth the win Read more

The Derby

February 3, 2025 | National Championship, Short Stories | Comments
Last Hope took the right edge after leaving the breakaway. His bracemate, a pointer named Hollywood Hal, took the left edge.  Both dogs hunted them forward out of sight. In the second field they were found pointing, Hal in front, Hope backing. Bob and Bill knew Hal had stolen the point, for Hope was the faster dog. All was in order at the flush. Both dogs were watered from their scouts’ detergent bottles and released. 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

First Time at Grand Junction

November 23, 2023 | National Championship, Short Stories | Comments
Billy Berg was going to Grand Junction, the Ames Plantation, for the National Bird Dog Championship! He could not believe it. He had been running dogs on the all-age circuit only three years. Before that he had apprenticed under his father, John, who ran shooting dogs for the public on the horseback shooting dog circuit out of New Jersey. Billy had endured lean times but had some success. His owners were mostly one-dog sponsors who had been patrons of his father and placed a dog with him out of affection for his father. But now he had “made his bones,” qualified a dog for the National. This required that the dog win two firsts in open all-age stakes of an hour. Not easy to do, for hour stakes attracted large entries from all-age handlers pursuing the same goals as him, most with deeper strings. Read more

1938

May 11, 2023 | National Championship, Short Stories | Comments
It was a desperate year by every measure. The Great Depression had refused to end; war threatened again in Europe as Germany, now under Hitler’s thumb, smoldered with resentment under the punishing terms of the Treaty of Versailles; and most Americans lived in poverty, those rural who had no debt the best off because they could at least grow and put up their own food for winter and darn their threadbare garments and socks.  Read more

A Brace at Ames

December 17, 2022 | Fiction, National Championship | Comments
The year was 1938. The place was the Ames Plantation at Grand Junction, Tennessee, 55 miles east of the Mississippi River at Memphis. The event was the National Bird Dog Championship. It had been held most years since 1896, and here since 1901. The subject of this story is the winning performance and the players in it, canine, equine and human. 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