“Old Joe” and his daughter “Queen” are as ill-assorted a brace of
pointers as ever hunted a covey along the edge of a field of cow peas.
In the first place, nobody, to look at them, would ever suspect their
relationship.
“Joe” is a strapping, lemon marked dog, with a heavy head and a tail
like a couple of feet of garden hose. He has too much “lumber” to
please any bench show judge, but no sportsman can look at him without
recognizing a sturdy, capable workman. He is one of the stolid,
old-time type of “Mainspring,” “Rip Rap,” “Bow,” “Faust” and the other
heroes of his race imported in the early days from England. Despite
his coarseness, he shows his breeding, but his daughter, on the other
hand, is a common looking rat of a pointer, light and racy, thin as
a match stick and as nervous as the needle of a pocket compass. She
is a thickly ticked liver all splotched over with great patches of
solid color. Her nose is snipy, her skull is domed, her tail curls
provokingly upwards, and her thin ears are long and pendulous, so that
one suspects that somewhere in her mother’s family there may have been
a _mesalliance_ with a foxhound. This suspicion is emphatically denied
by her owner. Perversely, he worships this ugly duckling of his.
The old dog is a mighty hunter and quail are his favorite sport, but
he takes his pleasures sadly. He is as sedate as a senior deacon and
as serious as the professor of Sanskrit in a German University. Even
when his beloved Master appears in his battered felt hat and stained
and faded hunting coat, “Joe,” though he trembles with excitement,
never allows his feelings to get the better of him. His self control
is marvelous. ’Round and ’round he walks, stiff legged like a terrier
boiling for a fight, his tail as straight and stiff as a broom handle,
his big nose quivering, his yellow eyes flashing. But “Queen” skips
about, barking short, yappy barks, wagging her tail and wriggling her
slender body. She is always as flighty as a giggling schoolgirl. Last
winter was her first hunting season, and she threw herself into the
good sport of finding quail as a giddy debutante abandons herself to
the social whirl. She was out for a good time, and she had it. So did
we who followed her mad racings over the Sandhills.
In the field, this strange pair carry with them all their differences,
but by a system of hunting that the trifling “Queen” invented herself,
they managed between them to find an amazing number of birds. “Joe” is
blessed with a truly wonderful power of scent and cursed with an excess
of caution. Not in the memory of man has he ever been known to over-run
his birds. Time and again his fine nose catches the scent of the covey
twenty or more yards off. Then he takes so long creeping up to them
that they run merrily off, leaving a confusing and exasperatingly
tempting foot scent for him to snuffle over. Poor old “Joe”--there is
no more snap to his work than there is to pea soup, but “Queen”--she
hunts, as a Bobby Watson says, “laik ah bunch o’ fiah-crackers.” She
loves to run. Over the Sandhills she races, head up, tail waving.
[Illustration: Photo by Mr. Kirkover
A COVEY IN THE LONG-LEAF PINE]
At first she often ran plumb into a covey before she had the slightest
idea that there was such a thing as a quail within a hundred miles of
her. Startled and disgusted she would stand stock still for a moment,
and then, as much as to say, “O well, no matter--better luck next
time,” she would be off again.
But this was only at first. She soon got the hang of the game, and,
while she continued to range far afield, she learned not to flush.
“Joe” is too old a dog to learn any new tricks, but the versatile
“Queen” has devised an unscrupulous hunting system of her own that
is absolutely unorthodox but which fits in admirably with his slow
methods. As she prances over the hills, she keeps one eye on her steady
sire. When she sees him acting “birdy” she will rush in, dart in front
of him, and hold the birds till he comes up. It is, of course, very
wrong of her indulgent owner to allow her to ravish points in this
high handed manner. He knows it, and will sheepishly excuse her, by
saying he hadn’t the heart to leave the old dog home, but he is such
a potterer, we should never find birds unless he let “Queen” have her
way. In this way of hers she has a splendid good time. Without giving
up the sport of running riot, she has the sport of pointing with
the warm scent in her quivering nostrils, all the excitement of the
shooting, and the pleasant duty of retrieving.
Poor old “Joe” regards this erratic system of hunting with the greatest
disfavor. Whenever “Queen” darts in front of him to point the covey
he has found, he stops and looks at her, saying, just as plain as
English, “Impudent puppy!” Then he turns and looks at his Master, “It’s
a disgrace, sir, the disrespect of the younger generation--a disgrace.
Whatever are we coming to?” He sniffs an emphatically contemptuous
sniff and walks in very dignifiedly to back up her point. How annoyed
he is if she breaks ever so little at the sound of the guns, and with
what a perfect holier-than-thou air he will wait patiently for the
command, “Fetch!” His self-righteousness knows no bounds if, when
“Queen” is seeking busily about, he can, as he often does, go straight
to the dead bird, pick it up, toss it into his mouth, and walk off,
saying, “There, little girl, that’s the proper way to do it.” What
a splendid conservative he is! Poor old chap, his hunting days are
nearly over now. Though he stoutly refuses to acknowledge it, he has
outlived his generation. I don’t suppose that even as a puppy he was a
dashing performer, and now, on the verge of his dotage, he has become
unbearably deliberate. Yet for all his provoking faults one cannot but
admire his stout heart and his passion for hunting. He is the very
pattern of the good sportsman of the Old School, kindly, keen, and
a bit old fashioned in his ways. He is thoroughly game and will go
hunting till he drops. Even now, old as he is, he will face a swamp
thicket bristling with briars, at five in the afternoon that many a
younger dog would not hunt the first thing in the morning.
There is “Gypsy,” for example--she never will hunt any but the easiest
places. She is a little picture setter who comes down to the Sandhills
from Connecticut every winter for the quail season. She is clever as
an urchin and dainty as a princess. She has a capital nose and all
the speed in the world--when it pleases her ladyship to use her gifts.
She knows just where to hunt for the birds and she handles them in a
truly masterful way, but she has no more real love of hunting than
a Berkshire hog and not half the spunk of a cottontail. She is as
different from “Joe” as “Queen,” yet I know a very nice old lady whose
sons, she says, keep her “horse and dog poor,” who finds all their
hunting dogs uninteresting, because forsooth they lack individuality.
I wish that she might know Capt’n Jack Evans’s four dogs. They are all
half brothers and sisters, but nobody could fail to note their marked,
distinct personalities. The rollicking “Bob” and the timid “Dot” are
full brother and sister; brilliant “Bessie” and plodding “Sport” have
the same daddy as the others, but different mothers.
The privilege of going hunting with Capt’n Jack and this quartet may
be purchased at reasonable rates by the day or the week, but the honor
of accompanying him when he himself goes hunting for sport is bestowed
upon very few. I was delighted then when one morning he took me aside,
as we were waiting for the mail at the post office, and whispered
that had found a piece of country back in the hills “whar Ah reckon,
suh, thar’s more’n a million quail t’ the acre.” Capt’n Jack knows the
Sandhills, and he is not given to making promises he cannot keep. I was
sure we should find plenty of good sport.
[Illustration: “HUNTER’S HOME”]
Bright and early next morning, while the snap of the night frost was
still in the air, we set off to hunt this quail metropolis. The four
dogs tumbled about in the tonneau over the gun cases and lunch basket.
“Bob” jumped from side to side, critically inspecting the country,
while “Dot” and “Sport” lay on the floor, and “Bess” bounced about on
the rear seat. We left the main road soon and burrowed for five or six
miles along a twisting, sandy trail through the pine woods. We stopped
on the flat top of a hill, a miniature plateau over the edge of which
stood the tree tops of the valley. Right in the middle of the deserted
tote road we left the car, and, leaving coats, lunch, extra shells,
all, walked off across the hilltop. Through a grove of long-leafed
pines we went into the valley and worked forward, skirting the edge
of thick growth that marked the course of the winding stream. “Bob”
scoured the hilltop. “Dot” and “Sport” hunted carefully along close to
the swamp thickets. “Bess” beat up and down the southern side of the
hill just under the brow.
“‘Bess’ shore does know what t’ hunt fo’ ah covey on ah cold mawnin’,
don’t she”--and the words had hardly slipped lazily from the Capt’n’s
lips before she came to a stiff point. A high, shrill whistle and the
other dogs came and backed. We walked in; the birds flushed; and the
sport began. On up over the crest of the hill, hunting the scattered
singles. “Steady thar, you ‘Bob’!” The young dog had found one and
was trembling with suppressed eagerness. Before we could get to him,
“Sport” was pointing another bird over to the left, and, as we watched,
both “Dot” and “Bess” suddenly froze stiff on points. “Ah swear! all
fo’ o’ ’em on points on singles.” We separated and flushed our birds
at the same moment. Whur-r-r-r, whur-r-r-r-r, whur-r-r-r-r-r! To the
right, the left, on in front scattered quail got up on all sides of us.
“Bess” broke excitedly, and had to be properly reprimanded, and then,
a hundred yards further on, she redeemed herself by finding a second
covey. After this we did not hunt singles at all. During the day we got
up twenty-seven coveys, which is a pretty good true quail story.
[Illustration: “STEADY!” Photos by Mr. Kirkover]
For a day of good sport anyone in the Sandhills will heartily recommend
Capt’n Evans and his quartet, but the true favorite native son of
Moore County is a handsome blue belton setter owned by Jim MacDougall.
“Prince” has a pedigree that fairly bristles with champions. Both his
parents were winners at the field trials, and he himself was trained
by Armstrong at High Point. He is the marvel dog of all the Sandhills.
What stories they tell of him on the post-office steps and ’round the
stove in MacDougall’s store winter afternoons! From Dr. Adams to the
youngest black boy who hangs about the freight shed, everyone in town
takes a keen personal pride in that dog. Of course, he has pointed dead
quail, and quail in trees and under logs, and he has, as can be proved
by half the gold watches and every Ingersoll in the township, held a
point for two hours and sixteen minutes--some say seventeen minutes.
In the midst of his admirers at the store the handsome rascal is as
bored as a young prig back in his home town after his first term at the
University, but in the field he is keen sportsmanship personified. With
his free open stride, he covers the country, head and tail up, his nose
thrust into the air, sniffing first one side and now the other, eager
to catch the first faint suggestion of the scent of the little brown
birds. A short whistle and he stops in his tracks. A wave of the hand
and he is off again in the opposite direction, quartering the ground
perfectly. He stops dead on a point. Still as a statue he seems, but as
you walk closer you see that he trembles with suppressed excitement,
every muscle taut, every nerve straining, he stands there, a perfect
picture. Flush the birds and at the command he will retrieve, going
quickly and surely to each dead quail and returning it without so much
as a feather dampened. He is a splendid dog wonderfully broken.
[Illustration: DELIVERING QUAIL]
We all applaud the stiff antics of a high school trained horse and wax
enthusiastic over the trick of the lion tamer’s tawny pupil, but not
one in fifty of us ever thinks that the quail dog displays intelligence
and training far beyond these. He ranges over the country as free as
the winter wind, but always under perfect control. No bit guides him,
yet he turns right or left at the wave of a hand. No snapping whip
compels obedience, but he minds the call of a whistle promptly and
cheerfully. If a savage tiger or a docile brown cow could be trained
thus, scientific gentlemen would investigate the case in the interest
of animal psychology. It would be one of the marvels of the world, but
nobody thinks it at all “abnormal” in a setter or a pointer. Thousands
of rollicking puppies learn the trick each year.
How much more wonderful even is the subversion of the bird dog’s
strongest instincts to the will of his master! We have seized upon
that momentary pause that precedes the wild dog’s spring at his prey
and developed it into the pointing habit, a habit that, through
generations of painstaking training and selective breeding, has become
stronger than the instinct to pounce upon the birds. What self-control
is demanded to stand staunch when the birds flush right under your
nose! How many men have the firm hold on their passions that the quail
dog displays when he picks up a dead bird in his mouth and returns it
gently to his master? “The dog,” Maeterlinck has said, “is the only
animal that is the friend of man.” The bird dog has gone even farther:
he is the friend and the partner of man as well. He curbs his strongest
instincts for the good of the game that he and his Master play
together. His is the proud joy of humble service.
Half the sport of quail shooting lies in working and watching the dogs.
All day long the quail shooter has before him a living example of
strength, of perseverance, of good faith, of self-restraint, the very
cardinal virtues of good sportsmanship. It is a spiritual experience
that is good for any man. And we love our four-footed partner in
sport not alone because he is a splendid animal, good to look at,
intelligent, and faithful; not only because he shows us good sport;
but also because his own good sportsmanship appeals to the best
sportsmanship in ourselves.