Then and Now
Field trialing in America began in the 1870s, after British hunters ¿¿derisively challenged Americans to produce a dog "broken highly enough to compete with our English celebrities." America's first National Field Trial Champion Stake was run at West Point, Miss., in 1896. Eleven dogs pounded the course, and the $300 top prize went to Count Gladstone IV, a white, black, and tan Llewellin setter who sired a line of national champions.

The history of the event is told at the National Bird Dog Mu¿¿seum in Grand Junction, just a few miles from Ames Plantation. If the pomp and pageantry of field trialing tradition is ever in question, a visit to the museum will put all doubts to rest. There, front and center, the mounted body of Count Gladstone IV is on perpetual point on the far side of a split-rail fence in a huge glass case. Behind him is room after room of portraits of dogs and owners and handlers, and photographs of the "immortal domain" of the Ames Plantation, as the writer Nash Buckingham called it.

During the midday break between trials, Freddie Epp is roaming the halls. He's a slightly older version of his portrait that hangs in the museum. Inducted into the Field Trial Hall of Fame in 1998, Epp started running dogs as a hobby in 1954, in the hours he could spare from his Tennessee country shop. He'd first been invited to Ames Plantation by Clyde Morton, one of the early greats in the sport. "Naturally, I was honored to have those fine rich folks ask me to come," Epp says, eyes twinkling. "What I didn't know was that they were asking us ol' country boys to bring our bird dogs so they'd have somebody to beat. But soon enough, I figured out what it took."

Over the next three decades, Epp would become a full-time trainer, with dogs winning more than 40 major circuit trials. And of course, he has lots of stories. Once, a dog he was running had to make a hard turn around a fence. The dog was going flat out, Epp recalls, "but he smelled a bird right at the turn, and he stopped so hard his legs slid out from under him. I found him lying on his side, still locked on point." Fearing that the judges might not give his dog the benefit of the doubt, Epp leapt from his horse, stood the dog up, then remounted and called point. "He stayed tight the whole time, and I won the trial!"

High drama often attends the running of the National. In 1934, a much celebrated pointer named School¿¿field died suddenly (possibly of pto¿¿maine poi¿¿soning) just before the contest opened. And only last year, moments after owner Bud Moore and trainer Steve Hurdle ascended the green steps of the plantation manor house to claim the trophies (their pointer Shell Creek Coin had notched eight perfect finds in his winning race), Hurdle collapsed with a ruptured aorta. Evacuated to Memphis by helicopter, he underwent a successful eight-hour operation that required 44 pints of blood (he was back at Ames to compete this year).

So far during the 2007 meet, conditions have been difficult. A lower than average num¿¿ber of quail has the dogs working hard for a handful of finds. Still, three pointers early in the running set a standard so high that every handler and owner knows it will take an amazing run to bypass the mark.

On the third day, two dogs went head-to-head in a race that was a "once-in-a-lifetime event," says Terry Terlep, an owner of one of the brace mates. When Whippoorwill Wild Agin and BB's Pike hit the ground, it was 26 degrees and snowing. Heavy horse travel had already chopped up the course, and the mud had frozen into swaths of jagged ice. "It was brutal," says Herb Anderson, a field trial veteran of more than 60 years. "Everything was frozen solid. I remember thinking: This is no day for man or beast. But the dogs showed tremendous strength."

Even after the skin was stripped from their paw pads, Wild Agin and Pike streaked across the morning course. On one point, Wild Agin's tail was so encased with ice that he couldn't raise it to its usual upright position. "Their whole bodies were slicked with ice," says Brad Harter, a horsemanship instructor and videographer who has taped every National here for more than 20 years. "But those dogs still ate that country up. Every time we thought they were about to shut down, they just got stronger."

So strong, in fact, that they completed the course in less than the allotted three hours and blistered back across the starting line, hunting for the last 15 minutes in the sprawling cornfield where they had begun their stake. In all, they posted seven finds, with two shared between them.

That performance put the duo firmly in the spotlight, but three days later a star turn by a Floridian, Funseeker's Rebel, added a third dog to the mix of headliners. Running against the 2006 champion, Shell Creek Coin, Funseeker's Rebel notched six immaculate finds on another day of frozen mud and freezing winds. Strictly by the bird count, Rebel would take the stage. But many observers figured Rebel's run lacked the strength and grit shown by Wild Agin and Pike. So the question becomes: How much weight will other factors have in the judges' minds? And what might they have seen, riding forward of the gallery, that other spectators missed?