Advice for the Forlorn

Jeff Davis | https://gundogcentral.com

If it’s New Years week and you’re down and out
You’re feeling low as a snake
Cannot shake your blues
There’s one sure cure
If you’re a bird dog man
And here is what you do

Load two smooth mounts
In your trailer
Change the oil in your truck check the air in your tires
Tell your wife (and/or significant other)
You are going South (to sell the horses if she can’t stand the truth or the truth if she can)

Drive to Lake City, Florida
And take 247 South West to O’Brien
Find the sign above the gate on the left
Reads Chinquapin Farms

Drive in a quarter mile
You will see a flat steel pointer
White with a black head
Paper Rosie

Joe Hicks won the Masters with her
Then she led the shooting string
Joe trained the dogs
Then managed the place
Slade Sikes is his successor

You are at Chinquapin Farms
Acres of rolling sand over lime rock
Covered with wire grass
Beneath scattered pines

Quail thrive here in
Big wild coveys
Fed year round
Corn or millet

Plentiful but elusive
Stealthy hard to relocate
Reluctant to fly quick to run
In all directions

They can shut down
So they can’t be found
Where they go
No one knows
Some swear in the ground
Down gofer tortoise holes

Beside Paper Rosie
Stands the new clubhouse
Attached to a horse barn
Forming a T with a long top

Behind the barn
Stands the new kennel
Beneath a hip roof
Housing in splendor

A shooting string
All pointers
Strong in the blood
Of dogs that have won here

Over seven decades
Back to the days
Of A Rambling Rebel
And Evolution
Omen and Bisco Buck

Races run here
Have been epic
Burned in the memory
Of all who saw them

The courses are varied
Some flat like “27”
Some sloping like the Second
Some both like Swallow ‘Em Bottom
And Lookout Ridge

All give a strong dog
With a smart handler
And a good scout
A chance to win

Win a generous purse
And lasting glory
But to win here
Your dog must be true all-age

Heat resistant
Strong nosed
Acclimated to sandy land
On Loncalla here for practice

Whether you come to compete
Or like me to watch
You will be welcomed
Fed lunch every day and one night
Fresh ham cooked by Ted and Howard
And libations

Each morning you will gather at eight
On the west side where the breakaway
Goes down a hissing pipeline
Then forms a P through piney woods

For forty minutes the braces will hunt
Five before lunch and four after
Or if it’s hot three and three
Then the judges will pick those
To go an hour

At the end they will pick
A Champion and a Runner-Up
As they have every year since ‘69
Save ‘94 when Bernie pulled a red card

That almost cost the sport
Its best hour stake
Here have been loosed
Many great Champions
Handled by men hardened
By the troubles of the road

Men like Bill Rayl and son Fred
George Moreland Jr. and son George III
John Rex Gates and brother Robin
Pete Hicks and son Joe
Freddy Epp and Roy Jines
Andy Daugherty and Ricky Furney
And many more

All thanks to the generosity of one man
Over decades never wavering
A man who loves the sport
And its players good and evil or likely both
A friend of every man who ever
Snapped a check cord to a collar
Climbed aboard a handling horse
And blew the whistle
Ted Baker