Short Stories

A Gift

April 14, 2025 | Short Stories | Comments

Buddy Cain had achieved a long-held ambition, to his utter surprise. He had qualified Maryland Molly for the National Bird Dog Championship, to be held on the Ames Plantation beginning the second Monday in February, two months away. Molly was a four-year-old pointer female owned by Stan Shelton, a home builder from Baltimore. Like most in his line of business, Stan’s fortunes were boom and bust, dependent largely on interest rates and construction loan availability, over which he had no control. Read more

Gone Too Long

March 31, 2025 | National Championship, Short Stories | Comments

The scene was the National Bird Dog Championship, in February 2025. The trial dated from 1896. It was known as the World Series of Field Trials. A three-hour stake, the last of these, all-age handler reputations were judged on whether a handler had ever won it. A few had, most had not. It took a special dog to win, one with great endurance, dead broke and responsive to handler’s calls, his horse’s direction, with good eyesight, good hearing in both ears, good style. A dog that understood what its handler wanted of it, would consistently pattern forward, find birds, and handle them impeccably. Read more

Happiness Plantation

March 12, 2025 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Its name was apt when Bud Branch bought it after selling the business he founded and by brains and hard work grew to great value, then sold for cash. From age sixty to eighty Bud enjoyed it immensely, as did his sons Al and Fred, both hard chargers like their dad but in law (Al, counsel for plaintiffs badly injured) and venture capital (Fred, private equity in Silicon Valley). To deepen the plot, Al and Fred had different mothers, Al’s Wife One, Fred’s Wife Two, the Trophy Wife. Result, predictably, Al and Fred hated one another. Read more

Pedigree Fraud Corrected

February 10, 2025 | Ben Reach, Short Stories | Comments

Bill Blain bought Unicorn Plantation with the proceeds of the sale of his own Unicorn, product of an element of Artificial Intelligence he stumbled upon while designing an algorithm. He had fallen in love with the Red Hills of Georgia when an investment banker took him there to shoot quail and to pitch the sale of his start-up. He fell in love with bird dog field trials when at dawn one day of the quail hunt he rode with a plantation hand to watch him work a derby he was preparing to run in the Continental Derby Championship. 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

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