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Friends and Blue Quail Hunting |
By: Bob Zaiglin
2/2/2009 |
0.00 out of 5 with 0 votes |
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With the Texas deer season over, quail hunting represents an excellent excuse to spend time in the brush, and that’s just what I did on the third weekend in January. The hunt actually started on Friday the 23rd when my friend Harry Jacobson called to inform me that he, along with three of his English setters, were heading south to hunt quail along the Mexican border and invited me to join him.
Other commitments prevented me from meeting up with Harry on Friday, but by noon on Saturday, we were visiting over old times as we dined on a Tex-Mex delicacy, fajitas, in one of the local restaurants in Eagle Pass, Texas. Harry is not only one of my closest friends, he is professor emeritus of Mississippi State University and a renowned whitetail deer biologist, so much of our conversation concerned deer. By three p.m., however, our attention was totally focused on the silky black-and-white long-haired setters as they veered in and out of the thorn-laden brush.
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Hunting was slow, which is not uncommon late in the season as a large number of birds, particularly bobwhites, perish to natural causes. Fortunately for the dogs, a cold front arrived Saturday morning, dropping temperatures and enabling us to cover a substantial amount of ground. But, by 4:30, without a single covey rise, we loaded up the dogs and began to drive around the 3,500-acre spread in an attempt to locate birds feeding or dusting on the senderos (roads) criss-crossing the property.
 Although 80% of the annual crop of quail perishes
in their first year, supplementing their diet, particularly
during droughty periods, can increase the number of survivors.
It was not long before we spotted a covey of blue quail near one of the corn feeders located on the ranch. Now, for those wing shooters who have pursued blues, sometimes called scaled quail or cotton tops, locating them is one thing, but getting a shot at them is another. Behaviorally, these birds characteristically prefer to run instead of fly, and this poses a serious challenge to both a pointing dog and the shooters.
 Blue quail, sometimes referred to as scaled quail,
survive in extremely arid environments considered
undesirable to its cousin, the bobwhite.
Immediately upon spotting the blues, we covered the 200-yard distance separating us before releasing the dogs and entering the ocean of chest-high brush. As we negotiated our way to the first covey, another covey of 15 blues exploded skyward some 50 yards ahead of us, proceeded by three other coveys. We were into a bunch of birds, but failed to get off a single shot, that is, until we closed the distance to the first covey. Suddenly pairs of scattered birds began to erupt from the thorny undergrowth, and before we covered much turf, we had six birds in the bag and still had a lot of birds to locate. The little runners, however, were able to evade us, and after covering another couple of hundred yards, only two more birds fell from the sky before we returned to the truck and attempted to locate additional birds.
 Harry with one of his favorite setters
and a handful of good eating—blue quail.
By dark, we had located several other coveys, but getting them to flush was difficult. I picked up two more birds before we decided to call it an evening!!
 Few bobwhites were around or survived the drought
Texas is presently experiencing so we focused on blue quail.
At daybreak Sunday morning, we failed to find a covey until mid-morning, when we returned to the same area we hunted the evening before. Birds were not as abundant, but we did pick up four blues apiece and enjoyed some great dog work as the setters stealthily hunted the almost impenetrable brush without busting birds before we could get into position.
 I proudly display the hard-earned
birds taken along the Mexican border.
As we concluded our hunt, preparing our birds for some exquisite dining, we agreed that it was not the number of birds in our bag that made this hunt, it was the opportunity we had to share some time together, not to mention some old stories in the environment we enjoy most—the great outdoors! |
Community Feedback
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wileysnakeskins
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Re: Friends and Blue Quail Hunting
"Really awesome checking out the Englisn Setters, got a Gordon coming in March and hope to find some really good and informative bird/gun dog training manuals, any suggestions be appreciated/
Willy d, Phoenix, AZ"
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