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. Read more

Chinquapin Second Week January

Oh, Chinquapin I miss you so This first January Without your trial Read more

The Florida Championship

January 9, 2023 | Florida Open All-Age Championship, Poetry, Remembrances | Comments

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

December 25, 2022 | Continental Championship, Poetry | Comments

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

December 24, 2022 | Florida Open All-Age Championship, Poetry, Ted Baker | Comments

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

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

How the Florida Open All-Age Championship Was Different

November 30, 2022 | Florida Open All-Age Championship | Comments

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. 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

The Saddest Tale

August 9, 2022 | National Free-For-All Championship, Poetry | Comments

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

The Luckiest Dog

July 12, 2022 | Field Trial Hall of Fame, Field Trial Recollections | Comments

Who was the luckiest pointing dog that ever lived? His name was In the Shadow, call name “Buster,” and the story of his life holds many lessons and many joys. Read more