Before you ask, let me say that these are wild birds, wild and free bob white that know when to hide, and when to fly, and if you're gonna catch one in the air, you'd better be ready.
These boys are the bunch that went. Everybody knows (thanks to Dick Cheney) that too many shooters is too many shooters. Three is about perfect, but NOBODY has wild quail so EVERYBODY wants to go. We worked it out pretty good so we could be safe with a lot of "Hey? Where are you?"'s to go around because, unlike TV hunts, these birds like the cover.
Cover is briars! Cover is short little hardwoods that grow so close to each other that you have to bend over to deer height to crawl along the deers' trails IF there are any to follow. How a horny buck with a head full of antlers does it is beyond me because I was struggling without any horns at all.
The dogs, who hadn't been hunting all year but on one occasion were, to put it politely, hog wild! They didn't listen to Mark, their owner, and they wouldn't hold a point. But run and sniff they would. And they busted the biggest wild covey of birds I have ever seen! They flew and scattered and it never occurred to me to shoot at them until I saw Mark drop one with his .410!
Later, the talk of number varied from my guess of 12 to the high number of twenty, so the truth is probably somewhere in between. If the dogs had done the classic dog thing, and found the covey and held a point, more of us might have been able to at least think about getting ready for a shot. But it was something to see anyway, a flock of quail, and a 30 yard crossing shot from Mark that dropped a bird.
After you bust a covey like that, I've heard you're supposed to simmer down and let them hang out, but we were more bloodthirsty than that. We went after the doubles and such after the initial flush with the hyper dogs and had a pretty good time. Time was all I got to kill. I missed an easy crossing shot, again, flat-footed and unready. When the whir starts you better be drawing up your shot gun.
I was toting that 20 gauge Italian babe again. I learned my lesson trying to tote a Remington 11-87 last year for hours and hours, but I still couldn't swing ahead of my bird before my finger had clicked off a couple of shots. As a timed up skeet shooter, I think I may need to approach that endeavour differently in the future by NOT mounting the gun and practicing "low-gunning" it weeks before I go hunt.
Well you can't argue with Mark"s success. He shot a double once, and he picked one off in front of Tay, but was forgiven since he brought the dogs.
To say he was hot and showed us up would be an understatement. In fact, I was so disgusted with my performance that I let loose on a cottontail that darted ahead of me. The bigger, much slower and less sophisticated target still took three shells to do her in. Of course, sheepishly after the shot I asked, "It's still rabbit season ain't it?"
But Mark ended up with a four bird tally while the rest of us at least got to shoot at some birds and scare the poop out of them. I missed an easy easy shot toward the end of the day, and was so mystified by the miss, so taken aback by the sight of all the underbrush dissolving in my shot pattern just under the little body of the flapping, rising bird, that I never even hazarded a second shot.
Well, it was the first time we got to hunt that spot this year, AND it was the last time we got to hunt that land this year as the season ran out. So I doubt we put a dent in that covey that they cannot recoup--if it doesn't flood their nests out this year with all the rain we keep getting. After the hunt was over, and while we watched Mark clip the birds into little tiny, ready-to-fry mini "chickens" and I manhandled the innards out of my conejo, we could hear the covey calling to each other trying to regroup and get into their circle for the night.
So it was a good time, but it was just a shadow, though, of what the old guys at the club tell me were the good ol' days when Bobwhite were heard and hunted all over the state. Even I remember the call in summer time when I was just a kid, but I never hear it now where I live. I was just glad I got to take my baby for a walk and got to shoot at a few partridges. Next year I'm gonna keep on my toes and keep my head on the gun!
When we figure out why there aren't any quail around anymore, maybe we can figure out how to bring them back. It starts, though, I think, by spaying your nasty-ass cats. Feral cats are hard on an eco-system. So go get 'em snipped so I can go hunting more and more often!
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