Short Stories

A New Grouse Hunter

December 9, 2024 | Grouse Hunting, Short Stories | Comments

Sam Scales had just sold his AI Startup to a consortium of Private Equity firms for $1 Billion (his share) and embraced a new-to-him sport: Ruffed Grouse Hunting. He brought to it the same intensity he had to the Startup. He was a math genius with a photographic memory and a control freak, traits that did not equip him for easy companionship. But one trip into Maine abandoned-farm country, where he saw one grouse rise and fall to the shot of his host, hooked him. Read more

A Misunderstanding

November 29, 2024 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Misunderstandings destroy understandings, parent-child bonds, sibling affections, business deals. Among the most fragile of business relationships is bird dog field trial handler partnerships, known as ‘helpin’ each other.” With the wisdom only age brings, Ben and Sam often worked to heal misunderstandings among their acquaintances. Misunderstandings often arose during pointing dog field trials, an arcane world Ben had long inhabited and Sam viewed from afar through Ben’s eyes and stories Read more

The Surest Way

November 6, 2024 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Ben Reach seemed to spend more time on fights among siblings these days than any other problem. And the leading cause of the disputes was joint ownership of real estate inherited from a parent. “Don’t leave your children property to own together. It’s a sure recipe for an ugly fight,” Ben would say. His father had had a saying forty years earlier, “Surest way to destroy brotherly love is to leave brothers shared ownership of a farm — or anything else.” Read more

Worst Mistake

October 3, 2024 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Ben Reach and Sam Nixon MD were settled in Ben’s library-conference room at 4 PM on a Friday with drams of The Macallan 12 in plastic mugs and splits of club soda to dilute it on the table before them. Both were glad the work week was over — it had been a tough one. Sam had to tell a patient her cancer had returned. Ben had to tell a grandfather his favorite grandson had failed out of the grandfather’s Alma Mater. Ben mentioned the bird dog trainers, field trial and hunting plantation types, were just back from summer training on northern prairies. He and Sam were invited to a dove shoot on Mossy Swamp Plantation tomorrow. “What was the worst screw-up you saw field trial judges make in your years of doing that?” Read more

“Helpin’ Each Other”

September 4, 2024 | Booty Blevins, Short Stories | Comments

It was 1957, in the era before “Helpin’ Each Other,” when pro bird dog handlers scouted for one another out of economic necessity. It was in the era when pro handlers traveled in stake-bed trucks instead of dually pickup trucks pulling goose neck trailers, and in the era when scouts were mostly black men employed year around as assistant trainers by the white handler they scouted for. Those scouts were a band of brothers, low paid but loving their work and the dogs they scouted and helped train. Read more

Holes and Rules

August 13, 2024 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

“Every dog has got a hole, and his handler has to hide it,” was a truism in the world of bird dog field trials. This led to an experiment at the Deep South Open All-Age Championship, initiated by John Steed, owner of Fat Pine Plantation, venue of the Championship. Steed issued bodycams to each of the six mounted marshals he sponsored to ride throughout the Championship. Before the first breakaway, he met privately with the marshals. Read more

Spring Shuffle Delayed

July 29, 2024 | Ben Reach, Short Stories, Ted Baker | Comments

Oliver Bain sold his AI (artificial intelligence) Unicorn (billion-dollar start-up) to Microsoft instead of taking it public. He was 58, and unknown to any around him, had a secret ambition he would now satisfy. As a boy growing up on a farm in Virginia, he had walked with his father, a dirt farmer, behind home grown pointers and setters after quail. Read more

A Dread Problem and a Solution

July 22, 2024 | Booty Blevins, Short Stories | Comments

Sam Teel and Booty Blevins had been partners ten years, never had a fight. They argued some about how to fix a problem, but each knew that was healthy. They didn’t make much money, but loved what they did for a living, training and handling pointing dogs on the field trial circuit. In their day there was just one circuit, for shooting dogs were yet to be a separate circuit, formally. Sure, there were wide dogs and short dogs, big country and less big, major trials and weekend trials. Read more

The Handoff

July 10, 2024 | Short Stories | Comments

The year was 1955. Buck Reed had returned home to South Georgia from the war in Europe ten years before and embarked on his career as an all-age handler of pointing dogs as successor to his father, Sam, who had then retired from the same trade, turning his string over to Buck. Sam sadly died a year later of a heart attack, victim of the near universal curse of his generation, cigarettes. Read more

Siblings

July 2, 2024 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

“Inheritance brings out the worst in people,” Ben Reach often reminded his friend Sam Nixon M.D. when the old friends discussed the inevitable deaths of their shared patrons (Ben’s clients, Sam’s patients). A prime example occurred when Minnie Blanton asked the curmudgeons to meet with her jointly about a change she wanted to make in her will. Minnie was the widow of Buck Blanton, long time manager of Tall Pines Plantation, a showplace quail plantation just south of Thomasville. When Buck retired the plantation’s owner rewarded his long service by giving him a modest house and ten-acre curtilage on the edge of Tall Pines, subject to a buy-back option if Buck or a successor in his family ever wanted to sell it. Buck had left it to Minnie. Read more