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A Broken Plate
After a long hiatus I have returned to a sport I loved for many years. As I turn my pups loose now and watch them sail across the south pasture, I reflect on the many turns in the road that placed me here.
Initial Point
My Mississippi farmstead begins and stretches north and east from a big slab of granite known as the Initial Point of the Choctaw Meridian, which is an established survey monument, one of only a dozen or so in the United States, established in the early 1800’s. A dingy brass medallion with an X inscribed on its face, sits dead center of the stone. From that X, lands to the north and east, as far way as Tennessee and Alabama measure their boundaries exactly back to the small grove of beech trees and ultimately to the shaded brass marker therein. Along with coordinates and other official seals inscribed on the stone, are the words,….. ‘NEVER TO BE MOVED.’
Two Men and Two Mules
This is a true story. It is set in a time of many transitions, including in Sussex County, Virginia, the transition from mules to tractors in the cultivation and harvest of peanuts. The time was 1945. The characters were Richard Spain, just home from service in the Army in WW II, and renting a small peanut farm to work, and Clarence Edwards, a mule dealer.
The 2015 Florida Open All-Age Championship
All trialers know how sometimes and rarely things come together at a field trial to produce a magic event. So it was at Chinquapin Farm in January 2015.
A New Grouse Hunter
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.
My Invention
I have always been blessed with just the right amount of intelligence to get neck deep into something, but never enough intelligence to get out successfully. This was one of those occasions. It involves two bird dog bitches and a dummy, me.
Losing It
Harry Bain had been an all-age for-the-public pointing dog trainer-handler for thirty years. In that role he had lived in south Alabama, trained trial and hunting dog's mid-July through mid-September in North Dakota and traveled the major all-age trial circuit September through mid-March. Summers he had fished the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere until the last week of June when he readied for the trip north.
A Dread Problem and a Solution
Sam Teel and Booty Blevins had been partners ten years, never had a fight. They argued some about how to fix a problem, but each knew that was healthy. They didn't make much money, but loved what they did for a living, training and handling pointing dogs on the field trial circuit.
Twice Bitten
For a fourteen-year-old, truth can be illusive. In many cases it’s hard to sort out and in other instances it’s just as plain as the nose on your face. I do know one thing that was true; it was well into November, and it hadn’t rained in Amite County since July. The farmers had fed out all their hay and were hoping to get winter rye into the ground before the December frosts, but they needed a rain.
Holes and Rules
"Every dog has got a hole, and his handler has to hide it," was a truism in the world of bird dog field trials.
Spring Shuffle Delayed
Oliver Bain sold his AI (artificial intelligence) Unicorn (billion-dollar start-up ) to Microsoft instead of taking it public. He was 58, and unknown to any around him, had a secret ambition he would now satisfy. As a boy growing up on a farm in Virginia, he had walked with his father, a dirt farmer, behind home grown pointers and setters after quail.
The Handoff
The year was 1955. Buck Reed had returned home to South Georgia from the war in Europe ten years before and embarked on his career as an all-age handler of pointing dogs as successor to his father, Sam, who had then retired from the same trade, turning his string over to Buck. Sam sadly died a year later of a heart attack, victim of the near universal curse of his generation, cigarettes.
The Hunt Goes On
In the early 70s bird hunting was at its peak in Eastern North Carolina. I was a youngster still and loved to tag along on hunts with family and longed to have my own dogs. It was about this time that I attended my first bird dog field trial, a horseback event being held near my Uncle Henry’s farm. It was there that I first remember meeting Dr. W.C. Sanderson. He was there to compete as was his brother “Dute” Sanderson, a popular local professional dog trainer.
Should We?
Hurricane Hattie had requalified with a third place in the last qualifier of the season. Should they enter her was the question occupying her owner, Sam Slade, and handler, Mack Bain. Both were ambivalent and unsure of their judgment on the issue.
