Sporting

The setter needs little encourage­ment—he is a field trial champion and knows his business. Head held high, he searches for a familiar scent. As he races to the edge of another field, the setter’s nose finds what it seeks, and suddenly he halts—motionless—and transforms himself into a speckled statue. Dave raises his hat, a signal to his assistant, Darin Strickland, and the six-person hunting party he’s been ferrying behind Pomfret in a modified “bird buggy,” that Specter has found birds. The hunters have been sitting eight feet up in the back of the buggy, watching the dog’s performance. Now everyone watches Bill Royall and Pam, his bride of two weeks, step down from the buggy and carefully approach the bird dog on point, 75 yards away. The couple moves cautiously toward Specter, as if they have just entered a minefield. There are quail somewhere in front of the setter, but in the thigh-high grass it is anybody’s guess where.

Pomfret dismounts and walks between the two Royalls. “Move up with me,” he says to the couple, calmly. It is hard for the gunners to stay calm, knowing that any second there will be an explosion just at their feet. In an instant, the earth seems to erupt in a mass of flying brown darts. It is unsettling, to say the least, but the Royalls, having recovered from a previous covey rise, focus their 20-gauge shotguns on prospective targets and let loose with a volley, and each brings one down. In all the excitement of the flush and gunfire, Specter has not budged. The dog is “steady to wing and shot,” in hunting parlance, meaning once he goes on point, he does not move until he receives a command from Pomfret to do so. It’s a stellar performance.

Just as you think the curtain has fallen on this action, a small bit of chocolate fur bolts into the picture. Strickland has released Kayla, Pomfret’s Boykin spaniel, and she knows her job just as Specter knows his. Kayla’s mission is to find the downed birds and retrieve them to “hand,” which means she brings the quail to Pomfret. This dog not only knows her job, she loves her job. In seconds, Kayla sweeps the field like a four-legged vacuum cleaner and comes bounding back with one of the birds, then repeats the feat.