Billingsley's Bird Dog

by DILLON ANDERSON

I WELL remember the year Billingsley acquired Old Ruff, his pedigreed pointer with lemon spots the worthy son, as Billingsley often described him, of a champion bitch, The proprietorship of any bird fog with less than superior attainments was simply foreign to Billingsley’s nature. 1 refer, of course, to Richard k. Billingsley, Esquire, that peerless poker player. Hart, Fielding, and I, as long-time poker and hunt ing companions of Billingsleys, had been invited to accompany him and Old Ruff on the first hunt of the season, which was to be held on a ranch in Atascosa County.

I shall never forget the conversation around the log fire the night before the opening; how it was dominated by Billingsley; and how his sole topic was Old Ruff, then a four-year-old with the prime of his life still ahead of him. We heard every detail of how he had been “finished off” in the early autumn by an expensive trainer in Illinois. Billingsley—who, mind you, had bought the dog in the spring and thus had never hunted over him kept us up until a late hour talking about Old Ruff and his extraordinary abilities in the presence of the birds. His concluding remark, uttered as the fire burned out and we made ready to retire, was: “I think I will enter Old Ruff in the National Field Trials next year in Georgia. You’ll see why tomorrow!”

Old Ruff spent the night straining at his leash, which Billingsley had affixed to a cedar stake driven in the rear of the camp house. A full moon was out, and Old Ruff howled and whined and barked all night long. I remember the occasion in starkest detail, for I rolled and tossed through the dark hours, unable to catch more than an intermittent doze. I could tell that Hart and Fielding had a bad time of it too. Not so, Billingsley. After a remark or two about how really ready Old Ruff was for tomorrow’s hunt, he began to snore, and this continued throughout the night.

Along about dawn things quieted down ominously outside, and Billingsley arose to see whatever might have happened to silence his pointer. From what he said to himself as he strode around outside, we gathered the dog had simply pulled up the stake and dragged it off with him. So, while we dressed, Billingsley stood on the rear stoop in his nightshirt calling Old Ruff, who from time to time could be heard barking in the distance. We were dressed and halfway through with the coffee before Billingsley came back into the camp house. Though nobody had the heart to comment on what was going on outside, we could plainly observe Old Ruff through the screen door, still dragging the leash and stake and hard at work consuming the remaining portions of the Dominecker rooster he had brought back with him.

The first day

Billingsley appeared to be refreshed from his sound night’s sleep, and I noticed that Old Ruff showed no signs of weariness; after his meal he panted earnestly and seemed to be filled with that early-morning exuberance known to all lovers of the pointer breed. And he was truly a hale and handsome pointer with a big frame, a massive head, eager eyes, a long red dripping tongue, and a vigorous wag in his tail which seemed to sway his entire hindquarters.

After breakfast we were met outside by Wilbur, Billingsley’s local friend who had agreed to take us through the fields and indicate the areas where the big coveys had been seen earlier in the fall. Wilbur, a sallow, unshaved young citizen with protruding teeth, brought along a puny, liver-colored pointer of his own — an unwelcome development so far as Old Ruff was concerned; Ruff growled, showed his teeth, and revealed in the bristling hair on the back of his neck a readiness to fight the local dog on the spot. In fact, only Billingsley’s fast move in seizing Old Ruff’s leash saved us the unseemly spectacle of a mosl one-sided contest.

Old Ruff’s debut

Immediately he was unleashed, Old Ruff bounded off, barking, in the direction of a baygall and very shortly disappeared into it. Meantime Wilbur’s Joe worked slowly down a very promising fence row that led away from the camp house, and within ten minutes he was obviously trailing closely on game. The covey was not far ahead, as later events disclosed, for Old Ruff reappeared just in time to bark up fifteen or twenty birds not a hundred feet ahead of Joe.

“Takes him a little while to settle down,” Billingsley said airily, speaking of Ruff; then to Ruff he said, “Look close, boy. Steady.” But the animal was already well out of earshot.

Old hunters will understand, I am sure, why I must abandon here any attempt to recount the actual sequence of events that opening day; why it is painful enough to set out the results even in summary form. The unvarnished truth is that though we saw no fewer than a dozen fine coveys of quail during that day’s hunt, we never got one shot at a covey rise, and the only single shots we got were birds we flushed ourselves. Billingsley ascribed our bleak experience to our poor shooting, Joe’s errors, faulty shells, inadequate cover for the birds, and even to a gentle drizzle that fell on us throughout the day; but he saw no fault whatever in Old Ruff’s performance.

Several times Wilbur’s Joe came down on quail and held the point with steady posture, but invariably Old Ruff would beat the hunters to the spot, rush headlong into the covey, and flush the birds while they were still far out of our range. And each time Billingsley’s explanation was different. Once when Huff went barging in ahead of Wilbur’s Joe, Billingsley explained that the birds must have been running and were thus about to avert the slower dog’s point. Then, when the covey rose all around Old Ruff about a hundred yards away, Billingsley asserted fiercely that they were only field larks — no lark could fool Old Ruff; not a dog with a nose like that!

Billingsley never had any explanation whatever and apparently did not consider one necessary — for another vicious habit Old Ruff disclosed during the day; that of barking and chasing after the flying quail until they sailed great distances away, quite too far to be watched down for single hunting.

About noon we had wandered far from the camp house, and when we had come upon a most likely-looking meadow filled with ample Johnson grass cover, Wilbur’s Joe froze in his tracks not fifty yards ahead of me. I called to the others, but Billingsley at the same moment summoned us all in the opposite direction. Old Ruff, he announced, had not been seen in some five or ten minutes and must t herefore be down somewhere on game. Wilbur — who actually rents the ranch from Billingsley, I must say — whistled his Joe to come along, but that splendid, lean, and faithful hound would not move from his point. Meanwhile Billingsley continued to yell and bellow that we back up Old Ruff, that we honor his point. “You can ruin a dog,” he proclaimed, “by leaving him alone on birds.” So, finally, Wilbur whistled his Joe in, and the latter gave up, reluctantly, to follow us.

When we finally found Old Ruff he was on the far side of an adjoining farm marked POSTED. NO HUNTING. He was not on quail; he was in hot and raucous pursuit of the neighbor’s flock of guineas. Nor could he be called off until the guineas found sanctuary on lop of a strawriek.

“Glad to see him get all of this kind of foolishness out of his system while he’s a young dog,” Billingsley remarked as we returned. But before we could get back to the place where Wilbur’s Joe had pointed the covey, Old Ruff chased a jack rabbit through the area, flushed about twenty-five fine quail, and ran off down a ravine after them, barking and jumping with insouciant glee.

After noon

At noon we ate our sandwiches and apples under a big live oak tree, while Old Ruff skirmished at craw fish holes on the bank of a nearby stream. He drenched himself t horoughly in a little blue hole there before coming back and shaking cold water over us all. Then, as we finished eating, Old Huff lapped up all the crumbs, scraps, and apple cores in sight, and was actually eying Wilbur’s Joe hungrily, I thought, when Billingsley spoke to him with the only note of even implied criticism I ever heard him use in regard to his dog.

“Ruff,”he said, “I hope you settle down this afternoon. A dog with as fine a nose as yours has got to be steady. Steady steady, boy.”

It must have been midafternoon, and our bag of birds was still pitifully light, when we heard Old Ruff barking in a nearby field. Shortly thereafter we saw him come running our way with a big covey of quail in full flight ahead of him. We were in tall cornstalks, and the birds flew very close-by us, affording several excellent but very fast shots. We knocked down four birds, of which we got three, and Ruff ate the fourth one whole.

I noticed a smug look on Billingsley’s face as he narrowly beat his dog to the bird he’d shot; and as we walked away he said, “Well, we can thank Old Huff for another covey. I wonder where Wilbur’s Joe was on that one.” He was smiling broadly.

Old Ruff’s endowments

These events in Atascosa County took place seven years ago last fall, and Old Ruff is now nearly twelve years old and is in semi-retirement. (Billingsley still takes him along on some hunts “for his judgment, though his nose is not what it used to be.”) Since a bird dog’s career is built upon the acuity of his sensory gifts, let me describe Ruff’s several endowments.

Old Ruff is blessed with good teeth, an amply salivated maw, and a steady appetite. In the course of one day’s hunting I have seen him devour two rabbits, a setting hen and her eggs, three cans of dog food, a field rat, the edible portion of a young armadillo, and uncounted quail. That particular day was, to be perfectly fair, perhaps the high point of his career. Likewise, I must add, lest I do Old Ruff an injustice, that in the late afternoon he threw up most of the armadillo.

Old Ruff’s hearing

Any early evening, Old Ruff can hear the Billingsley back screen door slam at whatever distance he may have strayed from home, for this usually means that the master has returned from the office and is opening several cans of dog food. On the other hand, I will affirm that I never once observed Ruff heed, obey, or even pay the slightest attention to Billings ley’s words in the field, or to anyone else who tried to hunt over him. As a matter of fact, whenever anyone else tried to speak to the dog, Billingsley would start talking to himself. “Just how Old Ruff knows which one of us to obey is more than I can see,” he was always fond of saying on such occasions.

“Hold, Ruff; steady, boy; easy now, easy,” or “Look close, Ruff; look now; dead; dead bird” I’ve heard Billingsley bellow after winging a quail, with Ruff all the while romping through the fields in his own happy, carefree pursuit of his next morsel of food. Then, never a man without a command appropriate to the action, Billingsley would yell at the top of his voice, “Hie away, Ruff; hie away, boy.” This was usually followed by a prideful comment upon what a rangy dog Ruff was. “You can have your slower dogs — dogs for single shots, dead birds, and so on,” he would aver. “You can have your setters to pick out a single here and there. But Old Ruff is already out there in the next county looking for another covey.”

Old Ruff can see

A remarkable demonstration of Old Ruff’s farsightedness took place in the fourth year we tried to hunt over him, and at a stage which Billingsley was describing as the height of his career. We hunted that winter in the cutover timberlands of a South Louisiana parish where the abundant quail hadn’t been shot at for some time.

Our host, Pierre LeBlanc of the black mustache and booming voice, furnished a fine coal-black setter named Thibodeaux, whose work throughout the day was steady, consistent, and effective. Both Billingsley and Old Ruff appeared in the early stages to resent Thibodeaux’s quiet ease and poise in the presence of birds, and Old Ruff in particular barked a great deal as he circled around the spots where Thibodeaux was at work. But as the day wore on, Billingsley seemed to accept the setter as a fair dog—for his breed, that was — and spoke quite a bit about the advantages flowing to a dog who hunted in the type of country he knew and was used to. “Wait,” he said, “until Old Ruff gets acclimated here — gets the feel of things, I mean, in a strange place.”

It was late afternoon before we approached our day’s limit. We were, nevertheless, within one good covey shot of the mark and hopeful, since the last we’d seen of Thibodeaux, the black set ter, he was working far off to our right near a likely-looking oak mott.

Pierre and I moved, almost instinctively, in that direction, while Billingsley, a little weary by now, trudged along behind. Then, to my utter amazement, we saw Old Ruff in the pointer’s posture and stance which have brought that magic spinetingling thrill to bird hunters through the centuries. Billingsley saw him about the same time and cried, “Old Ruff’s on game,” in a new vibrant voice. Confidence, pride, and stern discipline were implicit in his tones. His admonitions then to his dog were wonderful to hear, not to mention his asides to Pierre and myself. “ Steady, Ruff; hold it, boy,” he said; then to us, “What a point! Gad, that’s a superb dog. . . . Hold back, men; easy! Can’t you see he’s right on the birds?”

At this state Billingsley, whose eyesight is quite erratic, say beyond the end of his gun barrel, went into an absolute transport of rapture.

“Look!” he cried. “Right ahead there. It’s Thibodeaux, down on birds. He’s frozen, and Old Ruff is backing him up; he’s honoring his point! There’s a dog for you.”

This was the first time Old Rufl’ had ever given Billingsley leave to claim he’d honored another dog’s point, and I thought Billingsley’s inordinate rash of pride was understandable; at least until I recognized the object which Billingsley had concluded was Thibodeaux at point. That which had deceived both Billingsley and his dog was not the fine setter at all, for indeed he was nowhere about. It was a pine stump, burned black — the same color as Thibodeaux and only about twice as big.

And feel

Whether Ruff’s remote threshold in this department is due to plain numbness or to a long-cultivated stoic strain in the breed is a point of sharp difference between myself and his master. But Ruff’s insensitivity was extraordinary, I must say. There was, for example, the time in Kenedy County when we came upon Old Ruff in an attitude which Billingsley described as an absolutely classic point, He even took time out, while I held his gun, to photograph the point (a picture which, incidentally, came out so well that Billingsley used it that year as his Christmas card).

Then, as we edged forward to flush the birds, Billingsley broke the silence of the prairie with rapturous praise. “By God,” he exclaimed, “Old Ruff might as well be set in concrete.”

As a matter of fact he was not far wrong. Ruff was caught and held fast in a coon trap.

“Bound to have been painful — not a howl — not a whine —never even whimpered,”Billingsley said as we extricated the still uncomplaining Ruff.

And smell

As anyone will tell you, a bird dog must have a good nose. Ruff has grown old, as I have said, and one day he will be gone; nevertheless, I shall put it down as I see it, and Billingsley can make the most of it—or the least. In my opinion Old Ruff has not yet pointed his quail number one, I contend that pure coincidence, propinquity to birds and other dogs, all in good quail country, more than explain every episode linking Ruff with quail — except, of course, as to cripples and dead birds which he ate.

This is a harsh conclusion, but it has not been reached lightly. On the other hand, I shall suggest a possible qualification, if only out of an exalted sense of fair play and in deference to Billingsley’s steadfast belief that Old Ruff was for years without a peer in tho field; and, indeed, there are a paltry few equivocal episodes where I could possibly have been wrong and Billingsley might have been right.

For example, let us take the hunt three years ago on the Dickson Ranch in Lavaca County, where the grass burrs are perhaps the worst and the quail the thickest of anywhere in the South.

It was about midmorning on a bright day, and though we’d seen many quail, we’d bagged only a meager few. Old Ruff’s eager ebullience and prodigious pursuit of rabbits, stinkbirds, and other irrelevant game seemed to have had a contagious and deleterious effect on the local dogs furnished by our host, so that they had all run around wildly for the first hour or two.

Then Billingsley and I suddenly came upon Old Ruff standing still in a pasture of good bluestem cover. I had to admit that Old Ruff had assumed an attitude of a bird dog on birds. As we moved up, I could tell that Old Ruff was no more pointing birds than he was playing a French horn. It is true his hindquarters were immobile, and his right forepaw was raised from the ground, but from my particular angle of view I was able to see that he was inert simply because he was in the act of extracting with his teeth a grass burr caught between his toes. So I naturally approached the animal in desultory fashion — whistling, as a matter of fact — all to the palpable disgust of Billingsley.

I watched Old Ruff gnaw away at the burr as we came closer upon him; then suddenly the largest covey I had seen all season arose immediately in front of the startled dog. Billingsley killed one quail and winged another, though I must confess it all took place so unexpectedly that I was unable to get my gun up for a shot before the birds were out of range. Billingsley beat Ruff to the cripple and bagged it nicely.

For the balance of the day in fact, for the balance of the season—Billingsley was absolutely unbearable. The talk he put out about the beauty of the point and the size of the covey grew all out of proportion to the facts. Nor did he omit the detail of my failure even to get a shot on the covey rise.

Any fair account of Old Ruff’s career must include an event the season before last when Old Ruff retrieved a bird late one afternoon. It was toward the end of a day of failure after failure, and we had scratched out only a handful which we had Hushed ourselves. We were approaching a little bavgall, where I thought I’d seen a wounded bird fall, when Old Ruff came out of it with a quail in his mouth. This naturally perplexed me, for I had never seen Ruff fail to eat any quail within his hungry reach.

“That’s another thing about Old Ruff,” Billingsley said proudly. “You can always count on him to bring in a lost bird.”

This remark was made just before Ruff came close enough for me to get the scent of the dead quail, which soon turned out to be awful. The poor creature had obviously been dead for several days, and was actually coming apart at the seams —a fact which Billingsley and I both pretended, each for his own special sporting reason, not to notice.

No account of Old Ruff’s nose would be complete without a summary of that day rather early in his career when we sought to hunt over him in some Fort Bend County rice fields. Quail were prolific in that area, and it was still early in the morning (Ruff had flushed no more than three or four fine coveys out of our range) when our hero met and made a new friend. She was a fine specimen of Llewellyn setter — a beautiful spotted bitch whose owner had been less careful about her on the particular day than he might have. Old Ruff’s nostrils flared and vibrated in the presence of this charming setter in ways that were thrilling to behold, particularly to one who is a lover of bird dogs. It soon became obvious that the setter was in a most attractive condition so far as Old Ruff was concerned, and the two of them went romping off together in the direction of a nearby pasture despite the roar of Billingsley’s stentorian commands.

We hunted all the rest of that day without the benefit of Old Ruff, though Billingsley blew his ultra-high-frequency dog whistle and called him off and on throughout the hunt. We flushed enough birds to get our respective limits and returned about dark to the car, where we found Old Ruff asleep under the bumper. It took both of us to wake him up.