Lodge Dispatch
Thomasville, revisited
Three days at Blackwater Plantation, where the quail tradition is older than the country song.
Ben Ardrey · May 2026
I had not been back to Thomasville in twelve years. The mules were still mules. The dogs were the great-grandsons of the dogs I knew. The cookhouse smelled the same.
The first morning
We rode out at 8:15. The dog man — a third-generation Whitfield — let down four pointers. Within ten minutes, the first point: a single, low and hard, off my left.
I shot it badly. We laughed. The wagon moved on.