December 26, 1975: in the arcane world of horseback shooting dog competition, it was the best of times and the worst of times.  Di-Lane Plantation, Mr. Henry Berol’s Georgia field-trial mecca, stood at its zenith, thanks to drip torch and dozer. The quail population soared; nature for once complemented man’s efforts. In one morning Tommy Olive, Mr. Berol’s trainer, and neighboring pro Harold Ray worked their strings on forty-one coveys of quail! But Henry Berol was dying, and Di-Lane would soon be gone.  Shooting dog standards had also soared. Inspired by the founding of the National Open Shooting Dog Championship and the Shooting Dog Futurities, all sights had been lifted. Better and better trials emerged. Classics became Championships, one by one. But Guy Lewis, on whose Virginia grounds the National had been founded, had passed from the ranks, and with him the fabled Hawfield grounds. Better dogs appeared each year, in the strings of talented and hard-working young pros: Moon and Ray, Kuser and Rayl, Miller and Herrington, Tracy and Grubb and Gates. Sage Doc Nitchman concentrated on shooting dogs now, and had his best yet in Champion Smart. But inflation raged, interest rates and gas prices soared, the stock market was just emerging from the tank. All but the die-hard owners of trial dogs were leaving the game, as happens when hard times come.

    On the porch of a bungalow on Elm Street in High Point, North Carolina, a graying shooting-dog handler and his wife said good-by to their children and grandchildren and watched them drive off, leaving memories of a warm family Christmas. The handler, Arthur Bean, took deep satisfaction in those three children, reared and educated with winnings and training fees earned over twenty-five years. But Arthur’s career was in sunset, and he knew it. In two months he could draw Social Security. His string, never deep, had withered to just two adults--a setter named Pride and a pointer named Sam--and a single derby, Pride’s son Zeb.  Just five years before, things had been different for Arthur: with Auburn Jill, he had beat them all in the Virginia Classic (now the Eastern Championship) in a record field of seventy-six; with Elhew Summer Tan, litter mate of Doc Nitchman’s Smart, he had done the same in the North Carolina Classic (now also a Championship). Tan had made North Carolina Shooting Dog of the Year. Two years before that, Tan had topped a record field of 107 as Georgia Champion when less than three years old. Arthur then carried the Elhew Kennel banner with Sundown and Knickebocker and Chesterfield. But Tan had died suddenly, and Sundown and Nick and Chesterfield and Jill were gone from his string. Had Jimmy the Greek handicapped the coming 1976 Georgia Shooting Dog Championship scheduled for February 1, the Arthur Bean entry would have rated the longest of odds.

    With the Bean children seen off to their own homes, Arthur drove to his kennel on the outskirts of town. Its sandy runs adjoined tobacco farms Arthur and other Carolina trainers (English, Grove, Jordan, Walker) had long leased for training grounds. Now urban sprawl and cattle farming, with its insidious fences and fescue, had reduced Arthur’s lease to one twisting hour. Few native quail remained. A far cry, Arthur mused on this cold gray day, from the February afternoon in 1938 when, with snow gently falling, Sport’s Peerless Pride, bound next day for Grand Junction and immortality, had pointed seventeen bevies in his jaunt from the Fairfield Grocery back to Dewey’s kennel just over the hill. Yes, things looked bleak for Arthur Bean the day after Christmas in 1975. But in the number one run in the Bean kennel, there boarded a young pointer that gave Arthur hope. The pointer Sam had come into the world three years before in the Winston-Salem kennel of master breeder Bracey Bobbitt. He’d passed at weaning to Virginian L. W. Kelly, any pointer pup’s best friend, a man who searched for the gifted pointer like the Holy Grail. (L.W’s system was simple: take two from a well-bred litter, put them on a farm and give the farmer his choice in exchange for six-month’s board and freedom to roam. The farmer would always choose the closer hunter, and L.W. would get what he sought, the potential trial dog. Not foolproof, but now and again it worked; L.W. had discovered many a good one.) From L.W. the pup had passed to another faithful pointer booster, Arthur’s friend Dwight Smith. When Arthur had gone to Dwight’s to look at Sam, Dwight had said:
“If you’re getting the pup for Miss Anne (Arthur’s wife, who had owned and still grieved for the fallen Champion Tan), he’s your’s for $75. If you’re buying for a customer, the price is $375.” Arthur watched the pup run for fifteen minutes, and tendered his check for $375. He wanted the pup for a new customer from New York.


    Arthur had campaigned Sam as a derby with marked success--four good placements. And as a first-year shooting dog, he’d put four more notches on Sam’s gun barrel. But in phone calls with the owner, Arthur could now detect doubt, and waning enthusiasm. When he arrived at the kennel this day after Christmas, planning to pack for tomorrow’s trip to Waynesboro and his traditional January’s work with fellow pro Fred Bevan, a message waited: call Sam’s owner. Arthur dreaded returning the call. He had an omen the owner meant to sell Sam. This time the owner didn’t say that, he just wanted to know how to get in touch with Arthur in Georgia. But he sounded discouraged, in spite of Arthur’s encouragement: “I’m getting him right. He’s not quite there yet, but I’ve got a month, and Fred says there’s worlds of birds this year.”
Next day Arthur and Anne, Sam, Pride and Zeb, plus the horses, Strawberry and Midnight, struck out at dawn for Georgia in the old pickup and trailer rig. When they made Waynesboro next day, Fred Bevan, much Arthur’s senior (he’d won the National in 1935 with Homewood Flirtatious), waited at his kennel. The first words of the tall, slim trainer with the eternal grin came as no surprise to Arthur: “Haven’t you got rid of that Midnight yet . . . that’s the roughest ridin’ walkin’ horse this side of Tennessee.” (It was true, but Midnight was tireless and surefooted and knew how to watch a dog. Arthur wouldn’t let him go ‘til he could find his better at an affordable price.) Fred Bevan had found a house trailer nearby for the Beans to rent. Better quarters than usual for their Georgia stay, but with a drawback they would soon discover. Its tiny propane tank often emptied in the middle of a cold Georgia night, leaving Arthur and Anne shivering beneath their blankets, and Arthur scurrying at dawn for a refill.  Next morning, Arthur and Fred saddled up to work their prospects on Fred’s ample leased acres of pine and farmland.


    “He’s turned into a right good lookin’ pointer,” Fred said as Arthur put Sam in the roading harness for the ride to their starting place. As the days ticked by, the two old pros worked patiently to put the numbers in Sam’s head. In hour-and-a-half workouts, Sam searched and reached and found six to ten coveys (and now and then a rattlesnake, the one feature of Georgia training Arthur didn’t much like).
“Arthur, I’ve got a feeling that dog can win it. I’ve never seen a dog hunt this country like Sam is doing it now,” Fred said two weeks before the drawing. Arthur could feel Sam’s self-confidence building, but he kept a check on his own. He watched now for signs of overtraining or staleness, but each time Sam went down, he seemed more ambitious and happy at his work. And then, three days before the drawing, the dreaded call came. Sam’s owner had an offer for Sam, and if the bidder came through with the cash, he would take it. Who was the bidder? At the sound of his name, Arthur’s heart sank. Another handler, perhaps the only one in the country Arthur did not count as a friend. The man had for years tried to buy dogs off his string.
“Please don’t sell him ‘til I’ve run him at Di-Lane. He’s getting’ right, and I think he can win it.”
But the owner didn’t buy it. “That will just be another $100 I’ll be out for the entry fee, and this offer may go down if he doesn’t win.”
That night Arthur told Anne of his conversation with the owner. “Why don’t you offer to buy him yourself?” Anne asked. Arthur drove to a pay phone and called.
“Would you sell me Sam for the same price?”
“Well . . . I guess so.”