An excerpt…This past October, I visited my friend Morris Baker at his company in Pennsylvania, RST/Classic Shotshell Company. We were discussing writing and sporting art and shotguns and bird dogs . . . when his eyes lit up. He had that innocent look of a kid in elementary school who just remembered a stash of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies in his lunch bag.

“Wanna see Burt Spiller’s Parker?” he asked. His eyes sparkled for he already knew my answer. “I’ll be back in a minute.” (Burt Spiller wrote countless stories about New England upland hunting, including the book Grouse Feathers.)

Morris reappeared carrying Burt Spiller’s Parker VH 20. Several years ago, Morris bought the VH at an auction with far less fanfare than was associated with the selling of Bo Whoop. The cost of the Spiller’s gun was unceremoniously equal to the market value. No additional value was placed on the Poet Laureate of Grouse’s ownership, but there it was in my hands.

The scenting ability of golden retrievers has been called the best among retriever breeds so often that the term “golden nose” was coined to champion their gift. Golden owner and breeder Phil Warren vouches for the breed’s excellent nose.

“I was running two goldens in South Dakota a few years ago through some nasty tangles and cattails near an abandoned farmstead. The dogs _flushed 35 pheasants. I was lucky enough to shoot a double—one of which landed in the open while the other, a cripple, disappeared back in the tangle,” Warren explained. “My golden, Fielder, ran out and quickly retrieved the bird in the _field. Then he plunged back into that mass of vegetation, which was three times his height. Somehow he found that cripple in all the dense brush and thick scent, tunneling deep through the tangle. The result was a precious rooster and a proud dog owner.”

Warren is a retired senior regional director for Ducks Unlimited who farms his land in Alstead, New Hampshire, with Belgian draft horses. He and his wife, Janet, have owned 11 goldens since the late 1970s; they currently have 3. The Warrens have had 6 litters with 3 females in the past 34 years, yet Phil says it was a male named Issac that “really sealed our commitment to goldens.” They hunted Issac hard for grouse, pheasants, woodcock, and waterfowl.

In 2013, Wynfield Plantation reopened its doors to hunters, after the quail venue was closed to the public in 2009. The closure of Wynfield had been gloomy news for many hunters in the South, who fretted the loss of a plantation considered a jewel in the crown of Georgia quail properties.

The land, located in the heart of plantation country near Albany, Georgia, has hosted commercial hunting parties for years, but it did not truly develop into the plantation so many hunters have grown to know and love until the early 2000s. That was when Larry Ruis first became involved with the property. Once a partner at a large accounting firm, Ruis had retired and was looking to fulfill a Southern sportsman’s dream: to own a quail plantation.

After acquiring it, Ruis oversaw the renovations, improvements, and launch of the operation under the Wynfield name (which he chose in honor of his grandfather, whose middle name was Wynfield). Ruis set about improving the facilities by adding several guest cabins and state-of-the-art kennels, and extending the main lodge. Thus, Wynfield began to earn a reputation for getting the details right.