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The Smith Setter Celebration
It’s tough to beat the warm days and cool nights of Georgia in the Spring. The high heat and humidity, the kind that drives field trailers in droves to the Dakotas, the Rockies, or Canada, hasn’t yet hit. The sounds of songbirds float on the light-variable winds, while the thundering gobbles of Eastern wild turkeys echo through the fields and draws. Bird doggers hear them, but they’re really listening for the ‘poor Bob White’ whistle. Gentleman Bob has been an important part of life on the land off of Ben Hatcher Road for a long time.
My Life As A Field Trial Reporter
From 1995 until 2022 I had two professions, lawyer and pointing dog field trial reporter. The first to earn money to pay creditors and afford to indulge in the second, pursued for the pleasure it brought me.
A Lost Dog
It was July 15, 2003 and Billy Culp was fixin’ to turn loose for a workout his first green derby of the season. He was training this year on a new place just east of Lignite and south of Route 5. There were twenty pointing dog trainers working within a forty-mile radius of Billy , two hundred or more in the state, some serious pros, some serious amateurs, some just guys with a dog or two and a pickup truck.
THE WHISTLE
While running a dog at the NBHA National Derby recently, I lost a whistle that I had used in South Dakota back in 1979. It was a special whistle to me. I clearly remember sitting crossed legged on a horse while waiting on a lost dog and looking out across those open prairies. I thought of home for just a moment, and because it was my mother's birthday, I scratched the date on the whistle's side, August 27, 1979. I should not have been using such a keepsake, but it was my favorite. Even good things come and go, I guess. Losing it, and looking for it, and remembering it, reminded me of the following; one of many memories I have of that summer. It's not meant to be a striking work of prose although it may become one sometime in the future. I'm just recounting as it comes to me. However, every word and how it transpired is true, exactly true. (I'll change the names only to save any embarrassment, though no one should be embarrassed by the truth).
The Last Hour Dog
Ben and Sam were alone in Ben's library-conference room on a cold and cloudy year-end Friday afternoon. The week had been brutal for both curmudgeons. Sam had had to tell a favorite patient her cancer had returned. Ben had had to tell a grandfather his favorite grandson had been expelled from prep school.
Hi-Tech Climax
It was the end of the season. It promised to be a battle royal between two all-age dog-handler-scout teams. The dogs were Gen-X and Millennial, full-brother pointers, sired in West Kentucky, the latter from a year-earlier litter. The handlers were Mike Eanes and Ike Reams, former team mates in a "helpin' each other" partnership that went sour. The scouts were Archie Bell and Will Smith, twenty-something former Georgia high-school baseball rivals who had pitched opposite one another in consecutive-year state championship finals games, each winning and losing one. There was no love lost between opposing team members. But that was nothing compared to the rivalry between the dogs' owners.
Puppy Introductions: Water, Game and Gunfire
Puppyhood plays an integral role in the future of your hunting dog. Introducing her to critical aspects of the hunt, including game, cover, water and especially gunfire, at critical ages and in a controlled manner to ensure a positive experience is important. It doesn't matter if you're training a pointer for the uplands, a retriever for the wetlands or hounds for small- or big-game, by keeping new experiences positive and slowly increasing the scope of that experience will guarantee your gundog loves all the aspects of her future job.
Field Trials Matter
Most scouts yawn when linemen run 40's, but not at the 2020 combine. Mekhi Becton, a 6-foot-7-inch, 364 pound offensive lineman out of Louisville ran a blistering 5.1. Heads didn't turn so much as they spun off of heads, for what current lineman of Beckton's size runs what used to be speed of yesteryear's fullback? My, my have times changed.
Breeding a Better Dog
A pair of wood ducks came screaming by as my dad and I folded the drake. Most likely my dad did the folding, but I tried to help with my single shot 20 gauge. He pulled our springer/lab cross and myself through the cattails and marsh grass searching for the drake.
