What Billy Morton Taught me
Posted 07/11/2023
By the early 70's wild birds were getting harder and harder to come by. Subdivisions and trailer parks grew up right where our old covey haunts were. Ever the optimists, we started a little walking shooting dog club. 'Shoot to kill', it was called back then. We knocked along for a few years, and our dogs were getting better, or worse, according to who you asked, different for sure. We subscribed to the American Field and read, religiously, accounts from all over the states and Canada. A whole new world opened to us. We read about Miller's White Cloud, Red Water Rex, The setter, Johnny Crocket, all the old legends, and their handlers.
Well, at Christmas, 1976, we made plans for several of us to meet at the restaurant in Robert and then head to Poplarville to attend the New Year's Day running of the Southern Championship. None of us had ever witnesses a big-time trial first hand, though we felt we knew the all the characters as if we mingled with them every day. I remember it being particularly warm and humid for early January. Remember, ha-ha, how could I ever forget it.
After breakfast I parked my truck and trailer off to the side and loaded my horse in with Fury, Lee Willie's black mount. (Fury is another story. He pulled on the reins from the day he was born until the day he died. Lee was a big man, and it took all he had to hold Fury back). Our trucks and trailers headed northeast for ninety minutes. We left before six, allowing ample time for incidents. There were none so we arrived at an early 7:15.
The road off the main highway to the clubhouse was a typical red Mississippi mud road and a recent rain had it in a sloppy state. We made it alright, but the entire faces of our trailers were covered. It was nasty. No one was stirring around the clubhouse when we arrived, so we unloaded, saddled up, and began talking dogs and the warm weather. That's when it occurred to me that I had left my "just in case" jacket back in my truck at Robert. Oh well, I sure didn't need it at that time. I was wearing a new shirt my wife had given me for Christmas. It was white, long sleeved, with green embroidered scroll on the shoulders and down the back a ways, a western shirt. I really liked it. Forty years ago, and I can still picture that shirt in my mind, and what it reminds me of every time.
A whirring, spinning sound came from out of sight and down the muddy road. Someone was coming in a hurry. A big white Ford Thunderbird came fish tailing around the last curve, back end spinning from ditch to ditch. It was making slow but steady progress. Mud was flying from the rear tires and the engine was whining at a high rate. The car would have been doing seventy miles an hour had it been on solid ground. We cleared our horses away and gave much respect and ground to the incoming vehicle. The pilot spied our area, and no doubt sensed it to be tera- firma and zeroed in on us.
The car came to a sliding stop and out stepped a young man twenty or so, about my age. He excitedly bid us good morning and asked if the first brace had left. We answered in the negative and saw an immediate relief to his demeanor. "Whew," he said.
"I thought it started at seven." He then proceeded to open the back door of the Thunderbird, revealing a red leather interior, red carpet throughout, and the latest amenities available to a vehicle of that day. Also revealed was a slim lightly speckled ear pointer stretched out in slumber on the seat.
"Come here Bess," the pilot said to his lone passenger. Bess blink, raised her head, rose from her red leather bed, and made the little leap hock deep into the mud. She walked away slowly, taking time to raise each paw clear of the mud before making another identical step where she carefully went hock deep again. When she had went a lady like distance away from our crowd she squatted, peed, and made the same muddy trek back to the car. With the door still open she, leapt up onto the red leather seat, mud, and all. The pilot reached for a rag on the front seat and cleaned her paws. Then she laid her head down and returned to her slumber.
"What dog is that?" I asked.
The polite pilot answered. "That's Allure, she's running in the first brace." By then others were arriving, and the scene began to take on a typical field trial atmosphere. Horses were being brushed and saddled. Excited men calling for "dogs on the truck!" Our little group was still in shock. National Champion Allure, we looked at each other, the storied belle of Sedgefied Plantation, Mr. Jimmy Hinton's Bess, Billy Morton's champion!
If we had left right then and there our trip would have been a complete success.
But we didn't leave right then and there, and the trip got better. We mounted our horses and fell in with the large gallery headed to the breakaway. Riders that morning included Dr. Larry Mitchell, Richard Boetler, Flop Morrison, Marshall Loftin, Bill and Linda Hunt, and many others, making the list too rich for me to digest at the time. Let's just say it was star studded. The dog truck was waiting as we arrive. Mrs. Barbara Fairchild took a moment to announce the trial formalities, judges, and contestants to be released that morning. My mind though was primarily focused on Billy Morton and Allure. I don't recall their brace mate's name or the other handler. The young pilot, I now knew to be Billy Wayne Morton, Mr. Billy Morton's son, led his horse to the dog truck and retrieved Allure from a box on the top row. He snapped one of his reigns onto her collar and led her and his horse to a spot twenty or so feet out in front of our gallery. She sat on her back haunches, seemingly unconcerned or maybe "unimpressed" by the pomp and circumstance surrounding the championship unfolding that day.
Burt Wimmer and Urban Spanetti, two dog men from the farm country of Illinois, were judging that day. "Turn 'em loose,. one said, and we were off. The brace mate sped off in exactly the way I envisioned a field trial dog would. White, strong, courageous, and fast, it sped over the hillside and was shown at a distance going away. Mr. Morton and Allure set out in a very different mode, a mode much like I had set out on often, like a hunting trip. Off to one side, Allure slipped quietly down toward and around a thicket in an oak bottom and then, disappeared from sight. Both handlers rode the ridges and occasionally pointed out their dogs hunting likely spots. Allure seemed to seek the quieter, softer edges, briar patches and oak flats. The brace mate chose the longer pasture perimeters. He was making bold casts and was really thrilling to watch.
The weather was beginning to make a change. Cooler air began to drift in, and it forced the humid air to the ground, forming a cloud layer just above the surface. It was like what you see in a horror movie during the cemetery scene, ominous. Morton, at about thirty minutes into the hour and a half brace, came riding out from a thick bottom and signaled that Allure was pointed.
The gallery cantered to where Morton waited. When we arrived, his outstretched arm guided our eyes to a little speck of white buried in a tangle of dead honeysuckle vine. Allure's tail and the last third of her slim frame were all that were visible, and then only when a gust of cool breeze blew the fog layer away for a moment. Morton rode toward her, dismounted and pulled his shotgun from its scabbard. As he waded into the brush, quail began to lift out of the haze now covering the ground. The shotgun blast sent a cluster of oak leaves drifting in the now brisk breeze.
Later in the brace, maybe seventy-five minutes into it, Morton seemed puzzled as to where his dog was. In the distance to the north, the sky was turning dark black, and a sense of urgency was now taking grip on us all. Heavy rain was eminent. Morton would ride one way and then the other, calling, ever scanning across the wide-open course ahead and then into the bottoms that bordered our flank. He hadn't shown her since crossing through the big gap entering the stocker pasture we were riding in. We rode on for five or ten minutes and the ninetieth and final minute seemed to be closing in without Allure on hand. The sky ' darkened even more. The chill of a wind fresh just ahead of a cold rain begin to hit us. It was then we heard a voice call from far to our left and slightly behind. It was the young pilot, Billy Wayne, riding at a lope waving his Red Man cap in the air.
"POINT, point over here!" We turned and galloped our horses toward the rider, who by now had stopped and waited for us. I couldn't hear the conversation, but the son was fervently telling his father just how to find the lost dog. After a series of arm gestures and finger pointing, the elder Morton galloped a quarter mile to a fence, peered over it and raised his hat as the ninety minutes ticked away. We rode to him and watched Mr. Billy climb over a barbed wire fence and walk the hundred yards to another tightly grouped covey that flew away from under Allure's nose. "Pick-em up!" One of the judges shouted.
The judge's voice could have been the voice of God calling rain down from heaven. As quick as the orders cleared the judge's mouth a rare clap of January thunder echoed across the wide expanse of the Poplarville landscape, and rain drops as big as white oak acorns began to pelt everyone in attendance. The wind howled and blew blinding sheets of water sideways across the stocker pasture, sending calves bawling into the nearby thickets, and the gallery racing, heads bowed toward the dog truck parked on the knoll ahead,
The wet white shirt clung tight to my cold goose pimpled skin and my pants were soaked. Rainwater filled my boots up to the pulls. The wetness could have been tolerated as the storm was short lived, but fifteen minutes of heavy rain was followed by plummeting temperatures. What became wet instantly, became freezing just as quick. I shivered uncontrollably and my teeth were chattering like a child's. My horse shook to rid himself of the wetness and nearly threw me off. I was almost too cold to maintain my balance.
I managed to get to the dog truck just as Mr. Billy got there. He, in a yellow slicker, handed off his horse to someone and jumped into the truck. In a few moments Billy Wayne came riding up with Allure straining at the end of a long cord snapped to the saddle. As Mr. Billy got out of the truck to attend to Bess, the yellow slicker fell off the truck seat onto the ground. He wasn't wearing it anymore, instead, he was wearing a warm looking blue coat with a hood. Somehow, in the confines of the truck, he was able to remove the slicker and put on the new coat. My chance I thought. "Mr. Morton," I asked. "Do you think I could borrow your slicker until we get to the clubhouse."
He was in the process of unsnapping Allure from the cord and looked over his shoulder to see who had addressed him, me. He glanced just a moment and returned his focus to Allure. "No son, I need it." He answered. Now what in the world would he be needing that slicker for in the cab of that warm dry truck I thought. He had Allure by the collar now and with one hand reached to the truck seat and retrieved a bath towel. He briskly rubbed Allure. He cleaned the caked mud from her and dried her wet hair. Toweling her both with the grain of her hair and then against, and then finally smoothing her totally dry. He then took the slicker, turned inside out with a thin fleece lining exposed, and blanketed the inside of the top box. He carefully placed Allure inside and snapped the wire door shut. She curled up in a tight circle with her head lying on her front paws, content.
No other braces were run that day or the next. Pipes froze and school was called off. Two days later the trial continued and when all the dogs had run, Allure was called back to run again. I wasn't on hand for the call back, but I was told she had three covey finds that time down and won the coveted Southern Championship. Besides Allure's showing that day being a favorite dog memory of mine, I've always remembered what Mr. Billy Morton taught me........ When you run a dog in a field trial, just go bird hunting, and don't forget your jacket.
Well, at Christmas, 1976, we made plans for several of us to meet at the restaurant in Robert and then head to Poplarville to attend the New Year's Day running of the Southern Championship. None of us had ever witnesses a big-time trial first hand, though we felt we knew the all the characters as if we mingled with them every day. I remember it being particularly warm and humid for early January. Remember, ha-ha, how could I ever forget it.
After breakfast I parked my truck and trailer off to the side and loaded my horse in with Fury, Lee Willie's black mount. (Fury is another story. He pulled on the reins from the day he was born until the day he died. Lee was a big man, and it took all he had to hold Fury back). Our trucks and trailers headed northeast for ninety minutes. We left before six, allowing ample time for incidents. There were none so we arrived at an early 7:15.
The road off the main highway to the clubhouse was a typical red Mississippi mud road and a recent rain had it in a sloppy state. We made it alright, but the entire faces of our trailers were covered. It was nasty. No one was stirring around the clubhouse when we arrived, so we unloaded, saddled up, and began talking dogs and the warm weather. That's when it occurred to me that I had left my "just in case" jacket back in my truck at Robert. Oh well, I sure didn't need it at that time. I was wearing a new shirt my wife had given me for Christmas. It was white, long sleeved, with green embroidered scroll on the shoulders and down the back a ways, a western shirt. I really liked it. Forty years ago, and I can still picture that shirt in my mind, and what it reminds me of every time.
A whirring, spinning sound came from out of sight and down the muddy road. Someone was coming in a hurry. A big white Ford Thunderbird came fish tailing around the last curve, back end spinning from ditch to ditch. It was making slow but steady progress. Mud was flying from the rear tires and the engine was whining at a high rate. The car would have been doing seventy miles an hour had it been on solid ground. We cleared our horses away and gave much respect and ground to the incoming vehicle. The pilot spied our area, and no doubt sensed it to be tera- firma and zeroed in on us.
The car came to a sliding stop and out stepped a young man twenty or so, about my age. He excitedly bid us good morning and asked if the first brace had left. We answered in the negative and saw an immediate relief to his demeanor. "Whew," he said.
"I thought it started at seven." He then proceeded to open the back door of the Thunderbird, revealing a red leather interior, red carpet throughout, and the latest amenities available to a vehicle of that day. Also revealed was a slim lightly speckled ear pointer stretched out in slumber on the seat.
"Come here Bess," the pilot said to his lone passenger. Bess blink, raised her head, rose from her red leather bed, and made the little leap hock deep into the mud. She walked away slowly, taking time to raise each paw clear of the mud before making another identical step where she carefully went hock deep again. When she had went a lady like distance away from our crowd she squatted, peed, and made the same muddy trek back to the car. With the door still open she, leapt up onto the red leather seat, mud, and all. The pilot reached for a rag on the front seat and cleaned her paws. Then she laid her head down and returned to her slumber.
"What dog is that?" I asked.
The polite pilot answered. "That's Allure, she's running in the first brace." By then others were arriving, and the scene began to take on a typical field trial atmosphere. Horses were being brushed and saddled. Excited men calling for "dogs on the truck!" Our little group was still in shock. National Champion Allure, we looked at each other, the storied belle of Sedgefied Plantation, Mr. Jimmy Hinton's Bess, Billy Morton's champion!
If we had left right then and there our trip would have been a complete success.
But we didn't leave right then and there, and the trip got better. We mounted our horses and fell in with the large gallery headed to the breakaway. Riders that morning included Dr. Larry Mitchell, Richard Boetler, Flop Morrison, Marshall Loftin, Bill and Linda Hunt, and many others, making the list too rich for me to digest at the time. Let's just say it was star studded. The dog truck was waiting as we arrive. Mrs. Barbara Fairchild took a moment to announce the trial formalities, judges, and contestants to be released that morning. My mind though was primarily focused on Billy Morton and Allure. I don't recall their brace mate's name or the other handler. The young pilot, I now knew to be Billy Wayne Morton, Mr. Billy Morton's son, led his horse to the dog truck and retrieved Allure from a box on the top row. He snapped one of his reigns onto her collar and led her and his horse to a spot twenty or so feet out in front of our gallery. She sat on her back haunches, seemingly unconcerned or maybe "unimpressed" by the pomp and circumstance surrounding the championship unfolding that day.
Burt Wimmer and Urban Spanetti, two dog men from the farm country of Illinois, were judging that day. "Turn 'em loose,. one said, and we were off. The brace mate sped off in exactly the way I envisioned a field trial dog would. White, strong, courageous, and fast, it sped over the hillside and was shown at a distance going away. Mr. Morton and Allure set out in a very different mode, a mode much like I had set out on often, like a hunting trip. Off to one side, Allure slipped quietly down toward and around a thicket in an oak bottom and then, disappeared from sight. Both handlers rode the ridges and occasionally pointed out their dogs hunting likely spots. Allure seemed to seek the quieter, softer edges, briar patches and oak flats. The brace mate chose the longer pasture perimeters. He was making bold casts and was really thrilling to watch.
The weather was beginning to make a change. Cooler air began to drift in, and it forced the humid air to the ground, forming a cloud layer just above the surface. It was like what you see in a horror movie during the cemetery scene, ominous. Morton, at about thirty minutes into the hour and a half brace, came riding out from a thick bottom and signaled that Allure was pointed.
The gallery cantered to where Morton waited. When we arrived, his outstretched arm guided our eyes to a little speck of white buried in a tangle of dead honeysuckle vine. Allure's tail and the last third of her slim frame were all that were visible, and then only when a gust of cool breeze blew the fog layer away for a moment. Morton rode toward her, dismounted and pulled his shotgun from its scabbard. As he waded into the brush, quail began to lift out of the haze now covering the ground. The shotgun blast sent a cluster of oak leaves drifting in the now brisk breeze.
Later in the brace, maybe seventy-five minutes into it, Morton seemed puzzled as to where his dog was. In the distance to the north, the sky was turning dark black, and a sense of urgency was now taking grip on us all. Heavy rain was eminent. Morton would ride one way and then the other, calling, ever scanning across the wide-open course ahead and then into the bottoms that bordered our flank. He hadn't shown her since crossing through the big gap entering the stocker pasture we were riding in. We rode on for five or ten minutes and the ninetieth and final minute seemed to be closing in without Allure on hand. The sky ' darkened even more. The chill of a wind fresh just ahead of a cold rain begin to hit us. It was then we heard a voice call from far to our left and slightly behind. It was the young pilot, Billy Wayne, riding at a lope waving his Red Man cap in the air.
"POINT, point over here!" We turned and galloped our horses toward the rider, who by now had stopped and waited for us. I couldn't hear the conversation, but the son was fervently telling his father just how to find the lost dog. After a series of arm gestures and finger pointing, the elder Morton galloped a quarter mile to a fence, peered over it and raised his hat as the ninety minutes ticked away. We rode to him and watched Mr. Billy climb over a barbed wire fence and walk the hundred yards to another tightly grouped covey that flew away from under Allure's nose. "Pick-em up!" One of the judges shouted.
The judge's voice could have been the voice of God calling rain down from heaven. As quick as the orders cleared the judge's mouth a rare clap of January thunder echoed across the wide expanse of the Poplarville landscape, and rain drops as big as white oak acorns began to pelt everyone in attendance. The wind howled and blew blinding sheets of water sideways across the stocker pasture, sending calves bawling into the nearby thickets, and the gallery racing, heads bowed toward the dog truck parked on the knoll ahead,
The wet white shirt clung tight to my cold goose pimpled skin and my pants were soaked. Rainwater filled my boots up to the pulls. The wetness could have been tolerated as the storm was short lived, but fifteen minutes of heavy rain was followed by plummeting temperatures. What became wet instantly, became freezing just as quick. I shivered uncontrollably and my teeth were chattering like a child's. My horse shook to rid himself of the wetness and nearly threw me off. I was almost too cold to maintain my balance.
I managed to get to the dog truck just as Mr. Billy got there. He, in a yellow slicker, handed off his horse to someone and jumped into the truck. In a few moments Billy Wayne came riding up with Allure straining at the end of a long cord snapped to the saddle. As Mr. Billy got out of the truck to attend to Bess, the yellow slicker fell off the truck seat onto the ground. He wasn't wearing it anymore, instead, he was wearing a warm looking blue coat with a hood. Somehow, in the confines of the truck, he was able to remove the slicker and put on the new coat. My chance I thought. "Mr. Morton," I asked. "Do you think I could borrow your slicker until we get to the clubhouse."
He was in the process of unsnapping Allure from the cord and looked over his shoulder to see who had addressed him, me. He glanced just a moment and returned his focus to Allure. "No son, I need it." He answered. Now what in the world would he be needing that slicker for in the cab of that warm dry truck I thought. He had Allure by the collar now and with one hand reached to the truck seat and retrieved a bath towel. He briskly rubbed Allure. He cleaned the caked mud from her and dried her wet hair. Toweling her both with the grain of her hair and then against, and then finally smoothing her totally dry. He then took the slicker, turned inside out with a thin fleece lining exposed, and blanketed the inside of the top box. He carefully placed Allure inside and snapped the wire door shut. She curled up in a tight circle with her head lying on her front paws, content.
No other braces were run that day or the next. Pipes froze and school was called off. Two days later the trial continued and when all the dogs had run, Allure was called back to run again. I wasn't on hand for the call back, but I was told she had three covey finds that time down and won the coveted Southern Championship. Besides Allure's showing that day being a favorite dog memory of mine, I've always remembered what Mr. Billy Morton taught me........ When you run a dog in a field trial, just go bird hunting, and don't forget your jacket.
About the Author : Danny Bardwell
Visit authors website | View more articlesDanny Bardwell is a construction superintendent who builds large commercial buildings in the Baton Rouge / New Orleans area. For peace of mind and escape from the stress of building, Danny raises and trains pointers with his thirteen year old grandson, Lane.
Danny is a story teller at heart, and often when relaxing he is inspired by some little event or phrase. Lane appears in most of Danny's stories. His stories have appeared in local publication as well as national circulations such as Sporting Classics Magazine.
About the Artist : Kate Hall
Visit artist websiteKate Hall is an outdoor artist who resides on an Angus cattle farm in Tennessee, where she began hunting at an early age. During her 13 years as a flight attendant, Kate visited 27 countries and all 50 states. She now spends her time traveling across the country in search of rising trout and upland birds with her husband and their English Setter. In his first two seasons they hunted on public lands in MT, KS, SC, AL, NC, KY and TN for quail, ruffed grouse, sharptail grouse, woodcock, pheasant, prairie chickens, and hungarian partridge. Upland hunting has enriched Kate's life and influences much of her colored pencil work.
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