Few living today knew the days of wild bird (quail) hunting on foot on ordinary farms across much of America. I did, and it kept me sane and gave me much joy.
A city lawyer in Richmond, Virginia, I had grown up on a farm and grouse hunted in Virginia’s Blue Ridge as a teen. Soon after starting practice at age twenty-two in 1961, I was given a setter. I have had setter gun dogs ever since, and occasionally pointers.
In 1973 I was introduced to Joe Prince, a bachelor farmer of Stony Creek, Virginia. Joe worked dawn to dark grain farming (peanuts, corn, wheat, soybeans) March through October, quail hunted six days a week November through February (January after the season was shortened).
Joe’s territory was most of the farms within a ten-mile radius of Stony Creek. His father had practiced medicine there fifty years and delivered most of the babies, so Joe was friends with most families and careful not to hunt the same farms frequently, plus he gave plucked (not skinned) birds to those owning the lands where he harvested them.
Joe and I became fast friends, and until his death from a tractor accident in 1997, he welcomed me to hunt whenever I could steal away from law practice (every Saturday and another half-day most weeks). On the start of our second day, he gave me this sage advice, “Don’t say a word to your dogs today, no matter what they do.”
In other words, keep quiet.
Joe had a regular hunting partner, Denny Poole, Sussex County’s (later Prince George County’s) building official. Sussex being entirely rural, his work was mostly inspecting single and occasionally double wide mobile home instillations on farmlands, making him the perfect scout for new coveys. We shortly named our three-way team the”PP&W Hunt Club.” Denny also soon became my dear friend.
Denny was a Volunteer Fireman, making him a friend of many, and Ann “fixed” the hair of most of the ladies in western Sussex County making her widely loved. Joe let hunt clubs hunt deer on his owned and rented crop lands, all of this adding to the good will reservoir of the PP&W team.
Caption : Front of truck, left Denny Poole, right Joe Prince.
Denny and Joe could not have been more different in temperament, Joe mercurial, Denny calm and gentle, but they were fast friends, thanks to bird hunting and Denny’s wife Ann, who operated a beauty parlor on their back porch and fixed dinner for Joe several nights a week. They were also both crack shots with their Remington 12-gauge automatics.
Joe’s kennel was filled with home-bred level-tailed pointers descended from Lucky, a 1950s pup Joe got from a dog jockey at Zions Cross Roads that turned out to be a phenom and a legend (half the bird dogs in the county carried his blood). All strong nosed and calm, they made up for lack of style with their bird sense.
Joe’s training method was simple. Load the dog box of his pickup with year-old candidates and an old dog or two and go hunting. The naturals made the team, the rest were discarded after a few try-outs. Denny, on the other hand, was a careful, patient trainer, and his candidates usually turned out calm and well mannered like Denny. They hunted in front of him also and keyed off his movements so he seldom had to speak to them. They were excellent soft-mouthed retrievers.
When we started our partnership ten covey days were common. Bird numbers fell constantly until at Joe’s death in 1997 in a tractor accident three covey days were average. Sadly, Denny died of multi-system atrophy (much like ALS) in 2005 after a long fight, cared for at home by Ann. I miss them and our bird hunts every day.
