Call to Glory
They mended our imagination. The most astounding canine players ever to grace the century-and-a-quarter theater of American pointing dog trials. Can we help but suppose which was best? Sioux, La Besita, Palamonium. Luminary, Red Water Rex, Native Tango. Toe the...
A Door in the Woods
Though it was now past dusk and the forest was dark and still, I could see that, yes, it definitely was a door, alone, in the middle of the woods. “Good boy, Rex, easy now. Whoa on the bird!” The gathering gloaming of the approaching evening made it rather difficult...
The Phantom Setter
Originally published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1961, this story is one of the finest ever written about gundogs and grouse hunting. It is certainly the most chilling.
Once in The Stilly Night
It plum tickled his perversity to jist think ’bout chasin’ rarecoons. A classic from the November, 1935, issue of Field & Stream. Dud Dean held the empty frying pan over the glowing coals of our little fire. The fat caught, flared and burned out. After that burst...
Shadow the Wonder Pony
Shadow is living proof that a pedigree is just a piece of paper, and that there’s ultimately no substitute for heart, guts and desire.
Old Dog
The light in the old dog’s eyes fell, and he dropped loosely back from the gate of the kennel run. He had reared . . . trembling . . . begging with all the equity of his years . . . hoping against hope to go. But the man he adored most in the world had offered only a...
Patsy & the Princes: A Classic Story by Archibald Rutledge
The daughter of Carolina Frank is a princess by right. I became Patsy's when she was only four weeks old, and she already showed her blue blood and all it means in a pointer pup. Sensitive, patrician and affectionate, she was not happy unless she could curl up in my...
In the Field Trial Kingdom, Labs Rule
The Labrador retriever’s distinctions are many. If there’s one arena in which the Lab is utterly and incontrovertibly dominant, it’s retriever field trials. The most popular purebred dog in America; the most popular gundog, too: the Labrador retriever’s distinctions...
The Bond Between Hunter and Dog
The guy’s name was Charlie, I think. The one time I met him, at the now long-defunct Gustav Pabst Invitational Hungarian Partridge Shoot, he showed up in a Jaguar sedan with his German short-haired pointer riding shotgun. That was pretty cool, but what made an even...
Dog Fight
What gives with such shabby treatment toward man’s best friend? After a week of sunshine, the field made muddy by heavy spring rains transformed the clover and alfalfa into a thick sea of green. There were lots of wildflowers, and the few I could identify—primrose,...