Top of the Field

For U.S. hunting dogs and their weather-beaten owners and trainers, the center of the universe is the sleepy village of Grand Junction (pop. 750), Tenn. The National Field Trial Championship, World Series of U.S. bird-dog competition, has been held there for 52 years at Ames Plantation -- a 27,000-acre expanse of quail-rustled sedge and woodland with a great ante-bellum mansion, rows of hospital-clean kennels and stables floored in handmade bricks.

Grand Junction, as a result, has developed the same hard-eyed passion for champion bird dogs which The Bronx reserves for baseball players. Last week, with the town jammed to the last spare room by the annual pilgrimage of top U.S. dog men, Grand Junction's waitresses, its housewives, its postmaster, and the room clerk at its lone hotel had a new canine hero--a small (46 Ibs.) but dashing pointer-named Shore's Brownie Doone.

Prairie Chickens, Yes. Brownie, owned by Montana Mining Magnate Gerald Livingston, who keeps a string of 75 fine dogs at a 40,000-acre plantation at Quitman, Ga., was no newcomer to the Tennessee quail country. Though none but dogs with victories in other top trials may run at Ames Plantation, Brownie had managed the feat of qualifying for the National Championship as a derby (i.e., when he was less than two years old) in 1947. He had qualified annually since. But though he did well elsewhere--he won the National Pheasant Championship, the Continental Championship, was runner-up at hunting prairie chickens in Manitoba's Border International--he never quite managed a victory in the big trial at Grand Junction.

This year as he waited his turn in the ten-day meet, there seemed a good chance that Brownie might fail again. In the three-hour field trials, dogs are judged not only for the number of birds or coveys they find but on their speed, range and obedience, their thoroughness in hunting, their style and manners in pointing, and their steadiness under gunfire. Last year's national champion, a pointer bitch named Sierra Joan, performed beautifully; so did a Winston-Salem, N.C. dog named Fast Delivery.

On the morning he was to run, Brownie quivered with excitement and the early chill while trainers, judges and a booted-and-muffled crowd of 200 spectators mounted horses to follow the show. Brownie was released with another pointer named Spunky Pete, and the two raced madly out across the fields with the big cavalcade clumping cautiously along behind them.

Dead Quail, No. Within five minutes Brownie froze in a perfect point. He stood unflinchingly as his professional trainer, a quiet, rawboned outdoorsman named George Evans, dismounted and fired a shotgun in the air. Quail drummed up out of the grass (birds are not killed at out-of-season trials), and Brownie raced away again. After that he performed with brilliance, steadiness and wisdom. Spunky Pete disgraced himself by racing clear out of view and staying lost for 32 minutes, but Brownie went on hunting faultlessly and tirelessly hour after hour. When he was finally called in, tongue lolling, chest heaving, at the end of his trial, Judge Nash Buckingham of Memphis said: "I haven't seen but one or two better heats than that in 17 years."

Five days later Brownie was put down (i.e., released to run) again to demonstrate his ability to freeze into courteous immobility when the dog ahead made a point. The official consensus: "Beautiful." Five-year-old Brownie was crowned the top U.S. bird dog for 1950; Trainer Evans got $1,500 prize money; Owner Livingston received a suitably inscribed gold trophy --and Grand Junction went back to being a whistle stop for another twelve months.

*Every dog that competed in this year's National Championship was a pointer; in the last decade only one setter, Dr. W. Russell Trapp's 1946 Champion, Mississippi Zev, has managed to win at Grand Junction.

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