09/30/2026
Down in the Red Hills around Thomasville, the quail hunting is world famous. The men who actually make it work are not. 🐕
The handlers, the scouts and the wagon drivers on those big Thomas County shooting places have been Black men for generations, and the work runs in families. Neal Carter Jr., who has led the Georgia Plantation Dog Handlers Club, learned it from his grandfather and his uncles long before anybody paid him for it. Willie Sims puts it plain. His grandfathers on both sides of the family did this. Curtis Brooks brought his own son in at sixteen, the same age somebody once brought him in.
And this is not simple labor. It is reading a dog, breaking a dog, knowing which one is lying to you, and handling a mule wagon, a brace of pointers and a line of guests all at the same time. Back in 1954, a handler named Ruphus Davis was training dogs at Milestone Plantation for President Eisenhower. 🇺🇸
They compete now for a Governor's Cup, and the men lifting it are working the same pines their granddaddies worked. That is a family trade, handed down out in the broomsedge, where nobody was writing any of it down.
Is there a skill in your family that got passed down out in the field instead of in a classroom?
