Tur Bo in front on point Dolly behind honoring
Dolly
Dolly
Luke
Luke pointing
Lucky
Blaze
This was the year that I intended to hunt all 6 kinds of quail in the U.S.A. In October my wife, June, had a couple of surgeries and I wound up being her driver. This threw the timing off for some of the northern quail in that the weather may have been too bad. If the Lord is willing, I may try it next season.
This season was a lot better than the year before, in this area. I did get to hunt Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. I went to a lot of different places, especially in Kansas, and found quail in most of them.
I went to Oklahoma 2 different times. The first time I hunted from about 2:00 pm until almost dark on the first day, all day the second day and from about 8:00 am until noon on the third. The second time I hunted from about 2:00 pm until 5:30 the first day, from about 8:00 am until 1:00 pm the second and from 8:00 am until noon the third day. I killed 23 quail on these two trips.
I only remember going hunting in Missouri 3 times. I went opening day and 1 other time with Don Bolen, on private land. Once I hunted a Missouri Conservation Area, alone.
The bulk of my hunting was done in Kansas where they have a lot of state owned land but they also have close to a million acres in Walk-in Hunting. Kansas does more for their bird hunters than any other state, that I know of. Most of the quail hunters that I know, that live in Missouri, hunt Kansas more than their home state.
In Kansas, I hunted from Marshal County, near the Nebraska state line, to Greenwood County, one county away from the Oklahoma state line. I hunted some state owned land but mostly walk-in hunting. Most of the time I would find quail on the places I hunted. If not sometimes I would come back on another day and find quail. Most of the places I only hunted 2 times.
I had one place that I hunted 3 times because I knew there was another covey that I wasn’t finding. On this place, I would always find a covey on the front sometimes 2 but I knew there was a covey living out in an open grassland. The grass was fairly thin and I found roosts but I couldn’t find the covey until the last time I hunted it. Don, Linda Hansen and I walked back in there the last time and found the covey, I guess. The wind was really blowing and a quail flew over us at about 90 miles an hour. We hunted on and found more singles, that got up before the dogs got to them, and I don’t think we killed a quail. Don and I think that, as far back as that covey was, we were probably the only people to see it this year.
This season has been one of the windiest I can remember. With all of the weeds and limbs shaking, in the wind, the quail don’t hold well for dogs. The season started with strong winds and the next to the last day, that I hunted in Oklahoma, was extremely windy.
I lost a few quail that I dropped in the first part of the season but over the last half I didn’t lose a one. Part of this was due to the dogs having a lot of birds shot over them at Bird Fever Hunting Preserve where I have been guiding. I haven’t used Blaze and Tur Bo at Bird Fever. But all of the dogs have done a better job on dead birds because there were more wild quail this year than last.
I killed above 50 per cent more quail this year than last. I found some quail, before the season opened, while I hunted for prairie chickens or turkeys but counting only the coveys I found during quail season, I counted 49 coveys. Over the next few days I may remember more but that is the number I came up with today. With a mild winter and a good spring we could have a really good year next year.