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War
Wars between son-in-law and mother-in-law are endemic in our culture, perhaps pandemic in wealthy families and especially when son is Dixie-born and bred and mother-in-law a Yankee. So it was between Eloise Crump of Boston and Doug Hall of Thomasville, husband of Eloise’s daughter Charlotte.
A CHRISTMAS DEAL
Marshall Loftin was a dog man, pure and simple. Fox hounds, cat hounds, catch dogs, high dollar bird dogs, dogs, it didn’t matter, he could get more out of them than any man I’ve ever known. But, if he was a dog man, and he was, he was more so a keen observer and student of his fellow man. He dealt, with a high level of success, with millionaires, and poor sharecroppers alike. Doctors, slick horse traders, lawyers, wealthy businessmen, weekend rabbit hunters, and even I, counted Marshall as a friend and gave him plenty respect, though I never knew him to request it. Accounts of his interactions are many, I’ll relate one of my favorite.
Revenge
It was a rainy March Friday with more rain forecast for the weekend. Ben and Sam had endured a horrid week in their practices of law and medicine, but it was finally over. They sat in captains’ chairs in Ben’s library-conference room with a fifth of The Macallan 12 open on the table before them and thick insulated short glasses in their hands, each holding three fingers of the bottle’s contents. They had been silent for five minutes. They heard the outside door close behind Ben’s PIC (“Person in Charge”), Joanne, as she left for her weekly dance lesson.
Dog Names - Cartoons
Are you looking for a creative dog name? Cartoon shows offer great inspiration for finding suitable dog names. Your childhood favorite cartoon and animations are jampacked with unique, playful, and nostalgic characters. Below is a list compiled to assist you in making the right decision when selecting the right name for your fun-loving friend.
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).
Worthless Dog? Maybe, Maybe Not
If you are a long-time bird hunter or field trailer you have started and given up on many prospects you judged deficient or worse. This is the story of three such I gave away and that proved more than useful to its donee.
One Who Gave For Us-And Paid A Price
"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."
Oklahoma is more than OK
Opening Day is the one we wait for all year long. It's the time when we gather our family and friends, our dogs and favorite shotguns, and trade in every day life for the fields. If we're lucky, the day falls on a weekend and we don't need to make special arrangements. But if Opening Day lands during the week, well, then many of us mysteriously get sick. If enough of us bird doggers scrap work then the country's gross national product might suffer. It'll rebound when we return, but if we miss the opener there is a good chance we won't. Belling dogs and following up points isn't all it's cracked up to be; it's much, much more.
Girls, Guns, and Gun Dogs!
Growing up in the south one gains an appreciation for late fall/early springtime bobwhite quail hunting behind a brace of pointers about as much as anything can be appreciated. The landscape here is dotted with private plantations, public shooting preserves, and small family farms that hold the elusive Gentleman-Bob...opportunities abound. In fact, I cut my gun dog teeth, as it were, training pointing breeds and stumbling around bottom lands I could access hunting quail. It would be some years before I switched my focus over to retrieving breeds entering the world of professional training and trial competition.
A Conspiracy With a Happy Ending
They had been rivals since 1916, the year of the first Yankee Field Trial, that trial held every Presidents Day by the Georgia-Florida Field Trial Club and called by its members (all quail plantation owners) the Owner's Trial. They were three adjoining quail plantations, owned by cousins now, once by siblings, children of the same Cleveland Robber Baron, a coal and iron ore man, fabulously wealthy, who owned them all and called it Heavenfield. Before that assembly, the ground had been owned by a dozen turpentiners and small-patch cotton farmers. They sold for $6 an acre in 1885 to a straw man for the coal and iron ore man.
How to take better photos of your Gun Dogs
There is nothing we love more in our lives than our gun dogs; sorry to our spouses and significant others, but when was the last time they ran a blind retrieve, stopped on a whistle, or delivered a bird to hand? We have an ever-present desire to photograph our dogs and show them off to our friends and family, showcase our puppies and banter with our buddies. We have worked so hard to refine and polish our pup's skills and we want to make sure we're capturing and presenting them at their best.
My Rule Number One: Dont Bird Hunt For Business by Tom Word
Soon after I became a bird hunter I adopted a rule: Don't take anyone bird hunting in search of law business. I had figured out you only wanted to bird hunt with a few folk who shared your love of the dogs and the sport, folks who were safe and not game hogs. .
Joe and Denny and Me -- and Lucky - by Tom Word
In the summer of 1973, when I was thirty-five and a striving Richmond lawyer, I got an amazing gift from a more striving life insurance salesman hoping for referrals from me, an introduction to his brother, Joe Prince, perhaps Virginia's most striving grain farmer, and after his crops of wheat, peanuts, soybeans and corn were up, most striving quail hunter.
Whatever you do, dont panic if you accidentally shoot the dog
My liver and white pointer Gep stood staunchly on point on a covey of scaled quail on the Colorado prairie. I hadn't seen my 6 month old coverdog-setter Gretchen for almost an hour since I turned her loose on the shortgrass prairie. My last check on the GPS showed her 700-plus yards out to the west. As I approached Gep, a large covey of scalies erupted in a whirr from the cholla as I raised my Parker GH 16 bore to pick an escaping bird. The first bird folded and I swung to pick another bird out of the covey. I pulled the back trigger just as I detected motion from the corner of my right eye...Gretchen appeared out of nowhere and it was too late. I had already fired the second barrel on a late riser just as she arrived on the scene. I was pretty sure she got peppered by the tail end of my pattern.
Advice on a Dog Sale - By Tom Word
Ben Reach religiously followed a policy, preached to him by his father, not to get involved in law suits involving dogs. But ironically, he was asked for advice on bird dog matters constantly. This was because Ben had many friends in the bird dog world and was trusted. He had judged trials over many years and never shown favoritism. Nor did he ever decline to try to help a bird dog professional trainer-handler in distress, and there was never a shortage of them. The profession was by its nature highly risky.
