I fell, while cleaning dog pens, causing me to have double vision. I hadn’t been able to hunt for almost 2 weeks. Finally my vision returned to normal for most of the day so when Don Hansen suggested we go on a quail hunt on the 29th of December I was ready. The forecast was for 25 mile an hour winds but we went anyway. I think the forecaster under estimated.
Luke buried in the weeds on a Kansas quail hunt.
Sally
Dolly
I met Don and Linda in Junction City, Kansas and we drove to near Abilene and turned north. This late in the year a lot of the places have been grazed down. We drove by several before finding one with some pasture and CRP with a creek through the bottom.
I turned Luke and Dolly out with Garmin GPS and e-collars on. Don put the Garmin track and train on Tigger and turned her loose. One corner of this property had some harvested milo. We went along the creek to the south next to the milo. We got to the road and went to the east through a water way to a hedge row. We followed the hedge row back to the north end of the milo.
We started back to the west through some CRP. There was a pond that didn’t have any ice on it and we watered the dogs. We crossed the CRP then started across some pasture. We were about 150 yards from the truck when my GPS hand held vibrated telling me I had a dog on point. I checked and Dolly was on point about 65 yards from me. We started to her but when we saw her she was moving through a sumac thicket. I could tell she was trailing birds.
When Luke and Tigger came in they started trailing, also. As we stood watching them a single quail flushed about 30 yards in front of Dolly. Don shot but he really didn’t have a good shot. We moved up a little closer to the dogs and another quail flushed out along some brush about 40 yards from us. We tried to stay close to the dogs but all 3 were trailing several yards apart. Then about 8 or 10 quail flushed with the nearest dog 15 or 20 yards from them. I took a long shot. Sometimes you just have to see if your gun works.
Most of the quail that had flushed had flown to the south east so we followed. We crossed the creek and went back by the pond. There was a line of brush and trees without a lot of ground cover. We started through the brush and I saw Dolly off to my right trailing. I told Don that I thought she went on point and about that time he heard a bird get up near her.
Luke swung around in front of me. He was moving pretty fast and I saw him break stride trying to go on point and a quail flushed about 15 yards in front of him. On a normal day that would be plenty of room between him and the bird. Not today. It’s been my experience that quail run and flush ahead of the dogs on real windy days.
We hunted back to the truck without seeing any more quail. Neither Don or I have hunted this area before so we had to drive by each place on the Walk In Hunting Atlas. The best looking place we saw had a truck with dog trailer parked on it. We saw at least 4 hunters going down a fence row.
We still had dogs that hadn’t been out of the truck so we hunted some places that we thought were pretty marginal. Don turned Annie loose with the track and train collar and I put the e-collars and GPS collars on Lucky and Tur Bo. We hunted a pasture next to a soy bean field hoping it hadn’t been grazed down as much as we thought. It had been.
We hunted another place with about the same results. We didn’t see any more quail. I really enjoy hunting new areas and any quail hunt is better than sitting at home.
We had driven by most of the places near Clay Center. We only hunted 3 places. A month ago these places probably looked a lot better before they got pastured down. There are a lot of places that we didn’t see a little farther from Clay Center. I may come back and try some of those on a day without the strong winds.
Tur Bo
Lucky backing Luke.
Betsy