Delmar Smith named Park Cities Quail 2016 T. Boone Pickens Lifetime Sportsman Award winner

By Conor Harrison

Written by Park Cities Quail

Park Cities Quail is proud to honor Mr. Delmar Smith as the 2016 recipient of the T. Boone Pickens Lifetime Sportsman Award to be presented on March 3, 2016, during their 10th Annual Dinner and Auction at the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas.

Delmar has devoted a lifetime to the sport of gun dogs and bird dogs as a breeder, trainer and judge. As a conservationist he was at the forefront of ecological and biological studies to create superior environments for the propagation of gamebirds. Those areas have since been developed into excellent field trial grounds throughout the mid- and southwestern United States.

Delmar grew up on a ranch in Big Cabin, Oklahoma where he spent his childhood riding horseback to and from school and working for local dog trainers. By the time Delmar was 13, he had saved enough money from cleaning dog pens to take a horse-training course. He applied the techniques learned in that course to create “The Delmar Smith Method”. It was this revolutionary way for training bird dogs that led him to become one of America’s most respected trainers producing two books and three videos.

Many of Delmar’s own students have become excellent trainers and field trial competitors and attribute their success to his tutelage. Outdoor writer Tom Davis said, while it’s likely that Delmar Smith has trained more bird dogs than anyone, ever, what’s not even remotely in dispute is that he’s trained more PEOPLE to train bird dogs than anyone. And he’s trained them to do it humanely and intelligently. His seminars are now instructed by his son, Rick Smith, and his nephew, Ronnie Smith.

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Where women feel flush firing a shotgun at Broadfield quail

By Diane Bair and Pamela Wright

WOODBINE, Ga. — On a Saturday morning in a Georgia Low Country field dense with thickets and thigh-high briars, we hit the trail with five other women, a hunting guide, an English pointer, a black Lab, and loaded shotguns. We were on our first-ever quail hunt at the Broadfield Sporting Club and Lodge. We were gun virgins. Before this ultimate wild-to-table trip, we’d never shot a firearm.

We followed Cruz, the English pointer, as he zigzagged wildly through the moss-draped pine forest and open fields. He was clearly a happy dog, on a serious mission. “Yup, yup, yup,” Chuck Dean, our guide yodeled, keeping Cruz in earshot if not in sight.

“He’s getting bird-y,” Dean said, motioning us to quicken our pace. “Yep, he’s on point.” Up ahead, Cruz was poised, dead still, in front of a tangle of briars. We took our positions, guns at the ready. On command, Cruz flushed a covey of wild birds; we jumped; guns popped. Nothing dropped.

“Those birds scared you, didn’t they?” Dean asked with a knowing smile. “But you shot the hell out of that tree.”

The birds were so small. They flew so low. It happened so fast. It was chaos. And thrilling.

“Break ’em down,” Dean said, instructing us to disengage the shotguns. “Let’s go. Cruz is already back on point.”

Guns scare us, but the idea of hunting for our dinner was strangely appealing and empowering. And the Broadfield quail hunting experience, operated by the Forbes five-star Sea Island resort, was an easy, indulgent way for us lady novices to try out the traditional sport. But if we had the notion that hunting was going to be a backwoods, beer-soaked, mud-caked experience (and we did), it was obliterated the moment we arrived at Broadfield.

“We all have a deep passion for the place,” said Lee Barber, the general manager, as he drove us around the preserve. “We hope you feel it too.”

The isolated, private preserve stretches across more than 5,800 well-maintained acres. Old logging roads crisscross through open fields and forests of live oaks and towering pines, and lead to two lakes stocked with bass and bream. Wildlife is abundant, including turkey, deer, pheasant, and quail. The parcel was carved out of the original 50,000-acre Sea Island Shooting Preserve, one of the South’s earliest sporting camps.

There’s a kitchen, lodge, smokehouse, beehives, chicken coops, and organic gardens on the property. While some guests stayed over at the upscale resort on Sea Island (there’s shuttle service to and from the sporting club), we stayed in the rustically elegant, two-bedroom, three-bath cabin at Broadfield, with a stone fireplace and golden pecky pine walls. We went to sleep under star-splashed skies and awoke to birdsong.

The first morning, we ate fresh eggs with house-smoked sausage and thick bacon slabs, creamy grits and buttery biscuits with Mayhaw jelly, prepared by Caleb Smith, Broadfield’s talented young chef. After the Southern-style feast, we headed to the shooting range for a quick lesson, shooting clay pigeons with 20-gauge Beretta shotguns.

”You don’t aim a shotgun,” Dean said. “You point it.” Dean taught us the proper stance, how to tuck the shotgun into the crook of our shoulders (so it doesn’t kiss you when it kicks back), and where to place our hands.

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