Your Hometown: Trainers helping Waynesboro stay the “Bird Dog Capital of the World”
WAYNESBORO, Ga. (WJBF) – Not only is Waynesboro home to the Boss Hog Cook-off, it’s most famously known as the Bird Dog Capital of the World.
The Georgia Field Trials, a bird dog competition, have been held in Waynesboro for more than 100 years. But, what all goes into training and competing with a bird dog?
“I’m eighty-two now and I can’t wait to get up and get started,” said Harold Ray, a Hall of Fame Bird Dog Trainer. “It gives you a reason to get up and go.”
Harold Ray is the only living Field Trial Hall of Famer still living in Waynesboro. In fact, one of his Hall of Fame dogs, Tamoka, is on the city’s water tower.
He now owns Smith Setter Plantation, where he and his son train English Setters and Pointers.
Ray said there are not many Setter and Pointer trainers around anymore because it’s more expensive than training retrieving bird dogs, and the quail population is declining.
“The competition in the pointing dog breed has dropped dramatically,” Ray said.
To make up for it, trainers like Chris Stewart and Bill Evans have been working with hunting retriever dogs for quite some time now.
“We train dogs for your basic upland hunting which is dove, and your waterfowl hunting which is ducks and geese,” said Chris Stewart, a dog trainer and owner of Southern Way Retrievers in Waynesboro. “So we teach them to sit steady, teach them to deliver to hand, teach them the blind retrieve which is casting, sitting on a whistle, and your basic dove and duck hunting dog.”
“I have eighteen kennels so I keep anywhere from fifteen to eighteen dogs,” said Bill Evans, a dog trainer and owner Dead Bird Good Dog Retrievers in Waynesboro. “I hope our sport continues to grow and the pointing dog sport continues to grow. We’ve had field trials here since I think the early 1900s and they just continue to grow. We get people from all over the country out here.”
And to learn more about WHY Waynesboro is the bird dog capital of the world, we have a Hometown History segment you can read and watch here.
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