“What was the best race
You ever saw?”
“Silverwood’s at Chinquapin 2002” Read more
Silverwood at Chinquapin
Category: Field Trial Recollections
Four Men Two Dogs One Spare Tire
They were two-man teams of rivals. Some thought enemies, but they were not. They were famous, in a very small, obscure world. Each was a trainer-handler or a scout of all-age pointing dogs.
Each handler worked with a scout, usually a black man, who traveled with him in a two-ton stock-bed truck they drove from trial to trial hauling the horses they rode to handle and scout off of and the dogs in the string of pointers (and occasionally a setter) they entered in the trials.
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Chinquapin Second Week January
Oh, Chinquapin
I miss you so
This first January
Without your trial Read more
The Florida Championship
The Florida Championship is no more
A glorious trial is over forever
Like all things conceived by mortal man
It had a beginning and has come to an end
It was unique in many ways
Embodied the best of the field trial game
Wild quail on sloping prairie-like land
Wire grass cover over sand Read more
Two Slate Signs at Livingston Place
The Continental Open All-Age Championship
Livingston Place in 2002
Cindy Crawford Top Qualifier
Barshoe Esquire Champion
Dale Bush and Sherry Ebert judged
Cindy’s qualifying race for Jimmy Edmundson
On the day’s last course
Was spectacular Read more
When January Comes
When January comes
I will be here at home
First time since 1994
Won’t be at Chinquapin
The second week
Of that cold month at home
I spent in North Florida
From 1995 through 2022 Read more
A Brace at Ames
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
How the Florida Open All-Age Championship Was Different
1. No mud — ever, on Chinquapin Farm, even after heavy rain. No creeks, much less rivers. Three man-dug ponds, one at Big House, one on second morning hour course, one on second hour afternoon course. Soil: sand over lime rock, everywhere. Cover: wire grass, everywhere. No crop fields. No wooded areas that cannot be ridden through on horseback.
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Bound to Happen
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
The Saddest Tale
You can talk about your endurance tests
And yes, Ames is one with its three hours in West Tennessee
And the Livingston Place for its hour fifty in briars and Florida heat
(But you must not call it Dixie Plantation for both them words ain’t woke)
And four hours down at Paducah in three days is a worthy test I guess
But the toughest of all
Was at Sedgefields West ( Mr. Jimmy’s Sedgefields )
In the National Free-For-All Read more