T. Nash Buckingham was born in Memphis and attended Memphis University School. He began his collegiate career at Harvard, where heavyweight-boxing champion James J. Corbett assisted him in developing his boxing skills. Following an attack of malaria, Buckingham returned to Tennessee and entered UT. He played football in 1901 and 1902. He was captain of the 1902 team and made All Southern that year. He played four sports at UT. In 1910 he won the Southern AAU heavyweight boxing championship.
He left UT and returned to Memphis, where he entered the insurance business and served a stint on the sports staff of the Commercial Appeal, mostly covering football. He coached the Memphis Docs football team of the UT Medical Units. He owned a sporting goods business in Memphis from 1917 to 1925, served as a director of the Western Cartridge Company, and held an associate editor’s post with Field and Stream magazine. Buckingham was widely known as a field judge. His wife’s great grandfather built the home that later became the Hobart Ames Plantation, home of the National Field Championships since 1902. Beginning in 1934 Buckingham served as associate judge of the event for Field and Stream. He also was a judge in practically every field trial and retriever event in the nation. In 1964 he was elected to the Field Trial Hall of Fame.
He was the author or coauthor of nine books and hundreds of articles dealing with the outdoors and conservation. Seven books, beginning with De Shootinest Gent’man, are collections of well-told tales and poetry. He was a master of dialect. He also wrote, with William F. Brown, National Field Trial Champions: An Authentic and Detailed History of the National Field Trial Championship since Its Inception in 1886 (1955). In 1927 he was one of the founders of the Outdoor Writers Association and was honored in 1960 by its highest award—the J. Hammond Brown Award. He was one of the first winners of Winchester’s Outdoorsman of the Year award. In 1949 he was a leader in the successful campaign to establish Tennessee’s Model Game and Fish Act. In 1970 he was elected to the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame.