Happening Now!

I'm not a Sailor but I dig this, Congratulations Oracle Team, Stunning!!

I got a bud that does a lot of this type of Sailing, he's just a speed junky about a lot of things. His boats sail constantly racing in events around the world. You can see more on his Sailing efforts at www.gitanateam.com

I got to watch a few of this years America's Cup races on the tube, it's captivating to say the least. Again Congrats to this years America's Cup winners on a very hard fought victory! Probably will never be a victory like this again, pure history!

ORACLE TEAM USA won the 34th America’s Cup in a winner-take-all 19th race, defeating challenger Emirates Team New Zealand by 44 seconds in today’s clincher. Led by 35-year-old skipper Jimmy Spithill, ORACLE TEAM USA won by the score of 9-8.

This is the second America’s Cup win for ORACLE TEAM USA and Spithill, which won the 162-year-old trophy in Valencia, Spain, in February 2010. Then 30 years of age, Spithill became the youngest to ever skipper a Cup winning team.

In the past week ORACLE TEAM USA has steadily improved its boatspeed to the point where it could hydrofoil upwind at 30-32 knots, incredible performance never seen before in the America’s Cup.

“It was a fantastic race. We wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Spithill, the two-time Cup winner. “We came from behind, the guys showed so much heart. On your own you’re nothing, but a team like this can make you look great… We were facing the barrel of a gun at 8-1 and the guys didn’t even flinch.

“Thanks to San Francisco, this is one hell of a day,” Spithill said.

ORACLE TEAM USA’s victory marks one of the most improbable comebacks in the history of sport. The team won 11 races to score the 9 points required for victory due to a penalty imposed by the International Jury. Just last Wednesday, Sept. 18, ORACLE TEAM USA trailed the series 8-1. With the challenger on match point, the defender closed out the series with eight consecutive victories.

This was the third time in the history of the America’s Cup with a winner-take-all final race. Previously, the defender won in 1920 and the challenger won in 1983. Both times the winner rallied from a multi-race deficit, but never anything amounting to eight straight wins.

“This was a wonderful match of teams,” said Regatta Director Iain Murray, who’s been involved with the America’s Cup since 1983. “In the case of a boat coming from behind, 3-1 down as was the case with Australia II in 83, the shoe is on a different foot this time around. Then it was the challenger behind and this time it was the defender. But in the end we had great competition between two great teams, evenly matched, battling it out to the end.”

One million fans visited the official America’s Cup venues at Piers 27/29 and Marina Green since they opened on July 4, and hundreds of thousands more lined the shores of San Francisco Bay to catch a glimpse of the flying, foiling AC72.

34th America’s Cup Standings (first to 9 points wins)

• ORACLE TEAM USA – 9 (11 wins; ORACLE TEAM USA was penalized its first two victories by the International Jury)
• Emirates Team New Zealand – 8

R.L. Stevenson, hate I missed him.

Requiem

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

Stevenson's Requiem is inscribed on his gravestone in Samoa. A great admirer, A.E. Housman, wrote R.L.S as a tribute to Stevenson:

R.L.S.

Home is the sailor, home from sea:
Her far-borne canvas furled
The ship pours shining on the quay
The plunder of the world.

Home is the hunter from the hill:
Fast in the boundless snare
All flesh lies taken at his will
And every fowl of air.

'Tis evening on the moorland free,
The starlit wave is still:
Home is the sailor from the sea,
The hunter from the hill.

Painting of Stevenson and his wife (in Indian dress) by John Singer Sargent:

Early Humvee used for Mail Delivery in Montana

Mississippi Zev a little history

My wife and I went out to Austin this past weekend and a great friend was riding out with us. Well as usual my conversation touched on dogs as we all were leaving our animal children behind with family and friends. During the conversation we touched on dogs of our past and I brought up my two old Setters now long gone but never forgotten, old Jack and Ringo. Sarah our friend casually brought up the fact that her Great Grandfather had owned a Setter that had won the National field Trial Championship at the Ames Plantation back in 46. I was impressed and on arriving back home I began to research her Great Grandfather Dr. W. R. Trapp and his Champion, Mississippi Zev. So here is a little stuff on Sarah's Great Grandfather and the wonderful Setter he owned. I also failed to mention that a Setter Won that same Field Trial this past spring so here's a little info on that as well.

 Dr. Trapp and Zev

Shadow Oak Bo

Here is some great news for all my setter lovin’ friends. The drought is over for setters at Ames Plantation. Shadow Oak Bo wins the big daddy of em all!  Thanks to Ryan Frame of Dave Hughes Kennel for penning the story for me.  Stay tuned to Buck’s Blog and the LCS Blog for more news from Ryan.
John “Buck” Koritko

On the morning of February 13, 2013, an English setter named Shadow Oak Bo was turned loose against a pointer called Rivertons Funseek’n Scooter, a pointer at an important field trial The heat would be three hours long.

The field trial is the most famous and storied bird dog field trial in the world, the National Bird Dog Championship, run yearly at the Ames Plantation near Grand Junction, Tennessee. With time running down, Bo had tallied an impressive six finds and backed, or honored, his brace mate’s points three times (Scooter had five finds himself). Near the end of the time down, Bo slipped out of sight in the cover and was found on point again. Once more he had a bevy accurately located, his seventh.

When the National Championship began in 1896, it was won the first twelve straight years by English setters. But by 1915 and, fairly quickly, the pointer, often called the English pointer, had come to dominate in terms of numbers and wins. A setter called Mississippi Zev won it in 1946, then not again until Johnny Crocket won it in 1970, then all pointers for 42 straight years through 2012. Though Bo had done well, it was only the third day of the event Many more fine dogs had yet to run, but across the country, setter fans crossed their fingers and waited.

Owned by Butch Houston and Dr. John Dorminy, and handled by seasoned pro Robin Gates, many had thought that a setter could not win the National Championship. Some had said that the so called ‘All-age’ setters were the key and that there are not enough all-age setters to breed to get a National Champion. Bo’s pedigree, however, shows that dogs from nearly every area of field trials, walking and horseback, contributed to his genetics. It was thus a proud day for field trials and a proud day for setter fans and setter breeders everywhere when, on February 22, 2013, the waiting crowd heard the announcement of the 2013 National Bird Dog Champion: Shadow Oak Bo!
Ryan Frame of Dave Hughes Kennels

Nineteen Seventy (Johnny Crockett) to Twenty Thirteen (Shadow Oak Bo), that’s forty-three years! Before that, twenty-four years, back to Nineteen Forty-Six and Mississippi Zev; before that, back seven years to Nineteen Thirty-Nine and Sport’s Peerless Pride; before that, back nine years to Nineteen Thirty and Feagan’s Mohawk Pal, who won also in Nineteen Twenty-Eight and Nineteen Twenty-Six. But starting at the beginning, in Eighteen-Ninety Six, the first twelve were setters, until Nineteen-Nine when Manitoba Rap became the first pointer winner. Another seven years until John Proctor became only the second pointer winner in Nineteen Sixteen. But that opened the pointer floodgate, and pointer domination of the National Bird Dog Championship, the World Series ─ Super Bowl ─ NBA Championship ─ Indy 500 of the bird-dog sport, ensued. So it has been forty-three years since a setter has won the National at the Ames Plantation in Grand Junction, Tennessee. More than half a human lifetime. Some thought setter fans would never see another setter National Champion. Pedigree for Mississippi Zev
HOF FTCh (USA) Ch (AFTCA) Mississippi Zev  FDSB 327886 *1941 white black tan and ticked Offspring: 24	Peerless Eugene M  FDSB 282455 *1939 white black and ticked Offspring: 3	HOF 19-168-608 Sport's Peerless  FDSB 187632 *1930 +1944 white black tan and ticked Offspring: 112	Iredell Sport  FDSB 154714 *1926 black white and tan Offspring: 1
			Lady Burgess  FDSB 133693 *1925 white black and ticked Offspring: 1
		Watson's Stylish Lady  FDSB 256643 *1935 white black tan and ticked Offspring: 3	Dawn Pedro  FDSB 160081 *1928 white orange and ticked Offspring: 5
			Miss Virginia Lee  FDSB 156494 Offspring: 2
	Red Flapper  FDSB 267381 *1936 white orange and ticked Offspring: 1	Doc's Apache  FDSB 199167 *1931 white orange and ticked Offspring: 4	Roy Kelly  FDSB 140810 *1925 +1934 tricolor Offspring: 19
			Vic's Flapper  FDSB 150193 *1927 white black tan and ticked Offspring: 5
		Strange's Ghost Dancer  FDSB 193109 *1930 white orange and ticked Offspring: 3	Rubel's Mohawk Romeo  FDSB 144634 *1926 white black and ticked Offspring: 2
			Rubel's Independent Lady  FDSB 154390 *1927 white orange and ticked Offspring: 1

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Another Good One

"Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end"

- Unknown