Animals: Joe & Sam

Brookfield Dumb-Bell, named for the lemon dumbbell-shaped splotch on his side, was a runt. But he was a champion’s son and when his turn came he, too, won the top U. S. bird dog championship, the National Field Trials on the Hobart Ames plantation at Grand Junction, Tenn. One autumn when he had grown old and too slow for quail, the little setter’s master took him away from his familiar brush and stubble to the thick pines of Minnesota to hunt grouse. Out of his master’s sight one grey afternoon, he was standing on point when a blinding blizzard struck suddenly out of the north, driving the master to cover. Wind, sleet and snow beat down on the old dog, but he, who had never in his life broken a point, refused to do so now. Next morning his master found him, half-buried in a snowdrift, still on point—head high, tail out like a champion, frozen dead.

Brookfield Dumb-Bell lived only in John Taintor Foote’s classic story, Dumb-Bell of Brookfield, but last week from Georgia came proof that Author Foote’s tale was no fantasy. Out for quail with a friend’s three bird dogs were Paul T. Chance, an Augusta lawyer, and his two sons. After a covey rise, some of the single birds settled in a small ravine beside a railroad culvert. When Brilliant Joe, an 8-year-old setter, reached the top of the railroad embankment, he saw that one of his mates, a young pointer, had got there first and was pointing. Brilliant Joe stopped squarely in the middle of the track to “back” him (honor the other dog’s find by pointing too), as a stanch dog should always do. Just then Mr. Chance, who was about 200 yd. behind, sighted a long freight train puffing down the track. Frantically he ran forward, shouting and waving at the engineer, pointing to the motionless figure ahead. The engineer put on his brakes, too late. Brilliant Joe was still holding his point as the freight ground him under.

Touched by that story were the sportsmen gathered at Grand Junction last week for the 42nd annual running of the National Field Trials. But in a long fortnight of dog-running, it was the only reminder they had of heroic Brookfield Dumb-Bell. Thirty-nine of the nation’s best bird dogs, one of the biggest entry lists in years, performed in colorless fashion. Experts blamed the poor showing partly on the weather—late winter snow and sleet alternating with blustery spring winds—but also on the seldom-mentioned fact that the Ames Plantation is no longer precisely overrun with quail.

Sulu, Andrew G. C. Gage’s graceful pointer bitch, found only one covey, showing much of the style but little of the nose for birds which won her last year’s championship. Homewood Flirtatious, the 1935 winner, did no better. Famed Doctor Blue Willing has won more major field trials than any living bird dog, but the National has always eluded him. Making his fifth try this year, the gallant, hammer-headed old pointer seemed shaky and uncertain, spent much time roaming off course, located only two coveys. Saddler, a 4-year-old pointer who should have known better, disgraced himself by scooting off after a calf, pouncing on a litter of shoats, killing one and getting himself butted into a gulley by the sow.

Best performance of the first week was turned in by Doctor Blue Willing’s kennel-mate, Air Pilot Sam. This handsome pointer found five coveys and one single, but made a false point and obeyed none too well for his famed handler, Ed Farrior. The judges also liked Golfer Glenna Collett Vare’s Tips’s Manitoba Jake and G. M. Livingstone’s Shanghai Express, called them back for a run-off when the first series was over. Shanghai started off with a false point, handled one covey with style and finish, then sinned heinously by flushing another. Jake, who had backed Shanghai’s false point with unsuspecting confidence, located only one covey of his own. Plainly displeased, the judges called Air Pilot Sam and L. C. Crumpler’s Highland Bimpkins for a second try. Bimpkins made a flashy find in the first five minutes, searched fruitlessly for the next 45. Running wide and fast, Air Pilot Sam found not a bird. This time, however, he handled like a champion and the judges, after matching his two performances, gave him the title, Handler Farrior the $1,500 purse and a leg on the Robert Worth Bingham Trophy to Owner Lambert D. Johnson, president of Evansville, Ind.’s Mead, Johnson Co. (baby food).

Sired by a national champion, Air Pilot, whose own sire, Muscle Shoals Jake, had also won at Grand Junction, Air Pilot Sam has taken seven major stakes this season, including the U. S. All-Age at Holly Springs, Miss. last month, the National Free-For-All Championship and Canada’s Saskatchewan Prairie Chicken Trials and Dominion Championship. Sam showed his mettle at Grand Junction last year. During an exercise run for the benefit of MARCH OF TIME cameramen, he collided with a pack of darky dogs in pursuit of a rabbit, was ganged, had a collie’s fang sunk clear through his left flank. Few days later he ran a strong three-hour race in the National.