National Championship

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

Perfect Revenge, Almost

April 4, 2022 | Field Trials, National Championship, Short Stories | Comments

The opportunity for revenge came thirty years after the despicable act calling for revenge. Let us start with the despicable act. Read more

2022 National Bird Dog Championship

February 24, 2022 | National Championship | Comments

Some questions for the management of the Ames Plantation: Read more

2022 National Bird Dog Championship

| National Championship | Comments

Twenty-three were entered Sixty-nine hours worth of hunting potential Eight finished fifteen did not Read more

Turning Her Loose

February 19, 2022 | National Championship, Poetry | Comments

You’re at Ames Finally You’ve been trying For years She won two Firsts of an hour To get here Let ‘em go Read more

The National — As Seen By A Handler

February 14, 2022 | National Championship, Poetry | Comments

Here we go Three hours down Please birds move Come out of the woods If you stay put Where you roosted In that stick stuff My dog won’t point you Read more

Luck

February 13, 2022 | National Championship, Short Stories | Comments

Billy Kane had qualified Wheelman in the last one-hour open all-age run before the National Championship entries closed. He had not expected to. The first qualifying win had come two seasons before, and he had not expected that one either. Won it when the best dog’s brace-mate failed to back and it went with the thief after the birds. But here he was approaching the Ames Plantation, never expecting to be here. But his usual bad luck returned. Read more

Going to Ames

February 10, 2022 | National Championship, Poetry | Comments

So your dog is qualified And you’re going to Grand Junction To run in The National Championship The one and only To run on the Ames Plantation Where for a century and a quarter The continent’s best bird dog has been yearly crowned And where bird dog stories true and fiction abound Read more

The Test

April 20, 2018 | National Championship, Short Stories | Comments

Carl Dean slept little. He was up as usual at five. He and his partner Fred Archer were living for the duration of the National Championship in a former tenant house on a farm ten miles east of the Ames Plantation. This was the trial’s last day, and Fred Archer’s sole entry, Arkansas Andy, would go down in the afternoon brace. Carl would scout. His inability to sleep last night Read more

A Rivalry

February 16, 2018 | National Championship, National Free-For-All Championship, Short Stories | Comments

It’s the 1930s, times are desperate, the Great Depression has the world in its grip, yet for a few at the top nothing has changed. So it is for Harley Keen and Richard Bain, owners of businesses whose products are still in demand at prices producing a profit. Keen’s is tobacco, Bain’s is whiskey, legal again with Prohibition’s repeal. They are sports, and their shared passion is bird dog field Read more