At Grand Junction

Doctor Blue Willing was the gallery's favorite but Norias Annie's trainer, Chesley Harris, insisted that his bitch had a good chance to win two years running. The most famed woman pointer fancier in the U. S., Mrs. Nina Billingslea of Tulsa, Okla., had a good bitch entered, Spunky Creek Joann. Snow and sleet delayed the start three days, pleased Willard Gay of Meriden, Conn., who had brought his family 1,000 miles to see what happened. Two setters disgraced themselves on the same day: W. D. Albright's Silvermont which was taken up after two hours and Carl Dufield's white- &orange Buddy D. which scampered "out of judgment" for all but 15 minutes of his run. After a week, all 23 of the bird dogs which their owners considered the best in the U. S. had had a chance to follow their noses for quail over the clover and corn-stubble fields of the Hobart Ames Plantation near Grand Junction, Tenn., and the judges in the 40th annual national bird-dog championship field trials, unable to name a winner, picked four for a runoff.

The weather, the terrain, the supply of game put an element of luck into bird-dog trials that even the long three-hour runs in the National cannot wholly counterbalance. When Henry M. Curry's Homewood Flirtatious, paired with Doctor Blue Willing, found eight coveys and two singles on the first day of the trials, the judges might have suspected her of being merely fortunate until they saw her in the brief 30-minute runoff. Then paired with Andrew G. C. Sage's Sulu. Homewood Flirtatious found her first covey 50 seconds after she was put down. Two minutes later she nailed a single. As stylish as she was quick, Homewood Flirtatious backed her bracemate beautifully on Sulu's two finds, made two more of her own in the next 20 minutes. The second heat of the run-off between Doctor Blue Willing and Sports Peerless, was a mere formality. When it was over, the white-&-black pointer Homewood Flirtatious got first prize--$1,500 and a leg on the R. W. Bingham Trophy.

Henry Marlowe Curry Jr., 48, is a solid-looking citizen of Pittsburgh whose inheritance from his father, a onetime partner of Steelman Andrew Carnegie, supports his stock-trading and 6,000 acres near Waynesboro, Ga. There, with the assistance of Trainer Fred Bevan, he raises pointers, shoots and fishes. He rarely finds time to attend dog trials himself. Last week he was visiting his son at Phillips Academy at Andover.

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