The estate of legendary saltwater fly fisherman Billy Pate is being auctioned in Islamorada in a few weeks. Estate sales and auctions are an interesting glimpse into the lives of the deceased regardless of how well or if you knew them. Browsing the catalog online today I was only a bit surprised that he owned several Winchester model 50s. For whatever reason a fairly dominant percentage of rod men are also gun men, even if to a lesser degree. There is a pair of what appear to be Gokey snake boots (hmmm....wonder what size he wore?) and I even spotted a bird dog sculpture in one of the photos. And there's a leather gun case from Abercrombie and Fitch back when they used to make stuff for people over the age of fourteen whose diversions were not strictly hormone-induced.
Billy led a charmed life, having made enough money early on to pursue his passion with abandon. There are plenty of wealthy folk who ride out their days puttering around with lines in the water and a drink in hand to pass the hours. Billy was more than a dabbler - he went at it like it was the only job he'd ever land. Nice work if you can get it.
If you have a few minutes the catalog is worth a look. Fly fishing groupies might find a keepsake or two in the ten pages of offerings. Scores of books and videos, all being sold in lots. Keep your eye out for these on forums and eBay down the road. Also quite a bit of art and more flies than you can shake a push pole at. And yes, there are even a handful of push poles.
The link: RW Oliver's Billy Pate auction
Friday, April 27, 2012
Monday, April 16, 2012
Think he'd give me a key to the gate?
Over the weekend I stumbled upon an article in The State about a Greek shipping tycoon (is there any other kind of shipping tycoon?) purchasing one of the older plantations in South Carolina for a song. The place definitely has character and a certain John Mellencamp flavor...
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| Medway Plantation courtesy of The Post and Courier |
At almost 6700 acres it's a good-sized piece of dirt and all of it is in conservation easements, a flicker of hope that maybe part of my state won't be a subdivision someday. It looks like he's in it for at least one of the right reasons:
(Gregory) Callimanopulos plans to reintroduce wild quail at Medway and use the Berkeley County estate as a personal getaway and hunting retreat.
"Reintroduce" is a bit of a misnomer, the local quail underground telling me that enhancements will come from the native bobwhites already in residence. I'm guessing that of any limiting factors, cost will not be one.
If any of you happen to know Mr. C, do me a favor and mention that a nice donation to our state's bobwhite initiative would go a long way toward establishing him as a good neighbor.
The full piece-
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Patience, grasshopper
The last time I had an untrained dog in the house was somewhere around thirteen years ago. And when I say untrained, I mean it in every sense of the word. He was a "project", a rescue dog I was supposed to foster until I got him conditioned to the point that he could go live out his days with a nice family. Fast forward about thirteen years and that nice family turned out to be us.
He's a pretty well -adjusted dog now, still a bit quirky but what dog isn't? Obviously he's very tolerant of my daughter playing dress up with him, a big difference from the frightened, skittish, untrusting creature he was when I brought him home. It took about a year just to get him to the point that he would voluntarily choose to be around people. If I learned one thing from the experience it was patience, and if anyone tells you that you can train a dog without being patient you'd be wise to ignore whatever they say after that.
Since my first dog in the early '90s I've read and re-read a number of books and managed to pull a few nuggets from most of them. The one point they fail to emphasize, however, is how important patience is in bringing a dog along. They do a fine job of explaining what to do and what not to do, but they don't spend much time talking about how to go about it - patiently. You'll read things like "don't rush through this step" and "the dog will tell you when it's time to proceed", but this fundamental aspect doesn't receive anywhere near the attention that it should. Most inexperienced dog owners assume that the dog is telling them it's time to proceed at roughly the same time they (the owners) are ready to proceed. What a coincidence.
Possibly the authors of dog training books don't spend more time on the subject because it's something you can't exactly learn from a book. I'll go along with this premise. You learn it through experience, and you only get experience by getting older. Still, if more authors devoted a chapter or so to the role of patience in the training process it would at least be in the back of the mind of any new dog owner.
When I think back to training my first bird dog I cringe at the mistakes I made. Most of these were due to a lack of patience layered on top of a lack of knowledge. I read too many accounts of dogs that were finished by the time they were a year old (or even sooner) and by damn I was determined to have one of those. Fortunately for me I had a very forgiving, patient dog. I could have done many things better by simply not being in a hurry. Slow down to speed up as the road course racers say.
Since Wyatt came to live with us in 2010 I've been thinking a lot about patience and its role in the process. It hit home again the other day when I read this post on the Steady with Style website in which Martha Greenlee does an excellent job of showing that time is as critical as any other ingredient in having a bird dog who makes you happy. Martha is one of a handful of trainers who write regularly about the importance of not turning the training process into a contest to see how quickly you can finish.
If you spend time with a good professional trainer you'll notice how critical patience is to the process. Work a dog on two or three birds per session, limit sessions to three or four a week, maybe every other day. Don't try to fix every problem before the end of each session. Think about it - you didn't learn algebra in a day, did you? Some kids catch on quickly, some kids more slowly, but just about all of them get it if the teacher takes the time to keep working with them until the light comes on. If you're struggling with your dog's progress, chances are you're in too much of a hurry.
I'm not a professional trainer and have no illusions of ever becoming one. I just want to keep owning and hunting bird dogs, hopefully good, well-adjusted ones. I'm a better dog owner and handler now than I was and a big part of that is learning the role of patience in the process. It's not a sprint. On average you'll own and hunt a dog for a decade or more. Take a little more time in the beginning to get it right.
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| A very willing playmate |
Since my first dog in the early '90s I've read and re-read a number of books and managed to pull a few nuggets from most of them. The one point they fail to emphasize, however, is how important patience is in bringing a dog along. They do a fine job of explaining what to do and what not to do, but they don't spend much time talking about how to go about it - patiently. You'll read things like "don't rush through this step" and "the dog will tell you when it's time to proceed", but this fundamental aspect doesn't receive anywhere near the attention that it should. Most inexperienced dog owners assume that the dog is telling them it's time to proceed at roughly the same time they (the owners) are ready to proceed. What a coincidence.
Possibly the authors of dog training books don't spend more time on the subject because it's something you can't exactly learn from a book. I'll go along with this premise. You learn it through experience, and you only get experience by getting older. Still, if more authors devoted a chapter or so to the role of patience in the training process it would at least be in the back of the mind of any new dog owner.
When I think back to training my first bird dog I cringe at the mistakes I made. Most of these were due to a lack of patience layered on top of a lack of knowledge. I read too many accounts of dogs that were finished by the time they were a year old (or even sooner) and by damn I was determined to have one of those. Fortunately for me I had a very forgiving, patient dog. I could have done many things better by simply not being in a hurry. Slow down to speed up as the road course racers say.
Since Wyatt came to live with us in 2010 I've been thinking a lot about patience and its role in the process. It hit home again the other day when I read this post on the Steady with Style website in which Martha Greenlee does an excellent job of showing that time is as critical as any other ingredient in having a bird dog who makes you happy. Martha is one of a handful of trainers who write regularly about the importance of not turning the training process into a contest to see how quickly you can finish.
If you spend time with a good professional trainer you'll notice how critical patience is to the process. Work a dog on two or three birds per session, limit sessions to three or four a week, maybe every other day. Don't try to fix every problem before the end of each session. Think about it - you didn't learn algebra in a day, did you? Some kids catch on quickly, some kids more slowly, but just about all of them get it if the teacher takes the time to keep working with them until the light comes on. If you're struggling with your dog's progress, chances are you're in too much of a hurry.
I'm not a professional trainer and have no illusions of ever becoming one. I just want to keep owning and hunting bird dogs, hopefully good, well-adjusted ones. I'm a better dog owner and handler now than I was and a big part of that is learning the role of patience in the process. It's not a sprint. On average you'll own and hunt a dog for a decade or more. Take a little more time in the beginning to get it right.
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