Sporting Classics Digital

S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 6 5 occasions with Mike Gaddis, who knew exactly what kind of personal hell I was going through). Everything finally came to a head one fine November day in South Dakota when Ernie was 8½. The third time he pointed, moved and flushed a rooster, it used up all the give that was left in my emotional tether. I called him in, calmly clipped a lead to his collar, led him back to the truck – and at that moment his hunting career, for all intents and purposes, was over. (He remained a beloved family companion, walked, played with and fussed over on a daily basis.) Do I regret it? Of course – but that doesn't mean it wasn't the right decision. The magical thing about memories is that the unpleasant ones invariably fade, while the other kind only burn brighter. And no memory burns brighter for this aging sportsman than what Ernie did on another November day in South Dakota. In a bravura performance that still stands out as the greatest I've ever witnessed by any of my dogs, he tracked a covey of running Hungarian partridge across a cut alfalfa field that had approximately the same amount of cover as a billiards table. Then, after he'd pointed them dead to rights and I'd doubled on the covey rise – a clear indication that all the stars, moons, planets and random celestial bodies were favorably aligned – he proceeded to nail the singles, which had pitched into several parallel strips of unmowed grass, as if he knew their GPS coordinates. It wasn't close to perfection; it was perfection. Ernie even pointed one bird while retrieving another – the only time I've had that happen. Preserved as if in amber, I'll remember that performance until the day I see Ernie again. I have no doubt he'll jerk me around as impossibly in the next life as he did in this one, the crazy old cuss.

• Cover