Austin Farley and I went back to Iowa to hunt quail. The pheasant season is over. There are lots of conservation places to hunt as well as some walk-in properties. Austin and I have hunted in Iowa several times without hunting the same places. Most of the places we have hunted had quail and pheasants.
Sally pointing a single quail .
Luke honoring Sally.
Sally in a thicket on point.
One of the few times that we have seen hunters in this area I saw 3 guys coming out of the first place we hunted. I had talked to them and they hadn’t seen anything. It looked good and I always think I can find birds on places that should have birds.
Austin had brought Ember, his pointing lab puppy, and I had Luke and Sally with me. This first place was rolling hills, full of weeds, but what wasn’t noticeable from the road was that the conservation department had cut trees and let them lay all over the property. We would get started in one direction and hit an area we couldn’t get through. Hard on the hunters but great for the birds. The private property to the east was a harvested corn field.
We hit the edge near the corn field and hunted to the back of this property. When we got to the north side we had to try to go to the west. We spent a lot of time getting around the piles of downed trees.
The GPS showed Luke on point. When we got near the GPS showed Sally on point, also. I figured she was backing Luke but when we got there Luke was backing her. She must have come in front of him without seeing him, hit the scent cone and pointed. When we got close they both started trailing. We went over the hill with both dogs still trailing.
Over the hill were a line of trees that had been dropped on the ground. Sally went into the tangle and pointed. When I got close she moved up about 5 yards and went back on point. We stayed on the outside but followed along. This time when we got close a rooster pheasant flushed right in front of us. When the season isn’t open they look big and slow.
This would be a good place to tell about what Austin has been doing with Ember. As we hunted every once in a while he would whoa Ember, then walk in front of her kicking the cover. As he walked back and forth he would yell, “good shot, there they go, we’ve got a point, good girl Sally,” and anything else he could think of. Ember would not move until he said, “okay”. I’ve not been around Labs much but that was impressive. Ember is learning to back but when he whoas her she will not move.
We hunted to the west then back to the truck. The dogs had got birdy several times but we never saw any more birds on this place.
We went to another place just down the road from the last one. Although it was below freezing the road was thawing out and was slick. Once before we had hunted on this parcel but on the south end. We hadn’t gone this far.
Just over the hill we found a food plot that wasn’t visible from where we parked. It had a huge ditch on one side and a fallow field on the other. As we came around the edge of the food plot we decided to cross the ditch. It was not easy to get across and I called the dogs to get them ahead of us. Luke crossed and was hunting in the good looking weed field. I was watching Sally come toward us with the GPS. At about 150 yards it showed her go on point.
20 gauge AYA No 2 and 4 quail.
I really didn’t want to cross back over the creek. I thought she might be getting a drink in the creek or eating snow. The GPS will show them on point whenever they stop. We waited a bit but she wasn’t moving so we recrossed the creek. When we got to her she was standing in the fallow field pointing into the brush along the creek. We saw the covey of quail right in front of her and when we got close they started running through the brush then flushed. They put some trees between me and them and I never got a shot. Austin shot once and hit a tree.
It looked like maybe three of the quail had flown into the fallow field but the main bunch had flown through some trees and brush to a hillside of grass. We started through the fallow field and a couple of single quail flushed ahead of the dogs but not close to us.
When we got to the end of the fallow field we started across the draw with the brush and trees. We were just inside the trees when a quail flushed in front of me. I shot and it came down but the way it was hit I knew it wasn’t dead. When I shot a covey flushed, flying to the same hillside that the other had flown to, as well as we could see. I tried to mark the quail I had hit down but the way I crossed the draw kept me from keeping my eye on it. I called Sally to me when I thought I was close. As soon as she came in front of me she wheeled around and grabbed the quail. It was still alive but it hadn’t moved.
Luke pointing a quail.
Austin and I were separated a little when we came out of the woods. Ember was near him and flushed a quail right in front of him. He shot and it went down. He got Ember in to find his bird. As they were looking Luke came within about 10 yards of them and went on point. Austin went to him and the quail was lying in front of him, dead.
We came on through the grass and saw Luke on point, at the head of a little draw, near a small cedar tree. Austin whoaed Ember and circled to Luke’s left and I came in on his right. A quail flushed then about 4 more. I shot once at the first quail but missed. Austin shot and I saw feathers coming back by us. He said he should have shot again. The bird had flown on.
Austin thought his bird may have gone down just over the crest of a little hill. We got the dogs in to hunt dead but didn’t come up with anything. We hunted around the edge of the grass field and Luke went on point again. Sally honored him and Austin whoaed Ember. Luke was pointing into the edge of some woods that was just off the weed field. We almost got to him when about 4 quail flushed. Austin killed one and I hit one that dropped to about a foot of the ground then continued flying away.
Ember retrieved Austin’s bird and we started toward where my bird had flown. It was hit hard and I didn’t think it was going far. We started into the woods and Sally went on point. Austin said, “there is a dead quail lying right in front of her”. I went to her and she pounced on the quail. I petted her for a while then took the quail.
Luke on a quail.
We went back through the grass field but didn’t find any more quail. I got to thinking later that the dead quail that Sally had pointed was in line with where the bird that Austin had hit had flown. That was probably Austin’s bird and mine was still out there.
We went back across the big creek that we had crossed earlier then back to the north. We started down the north fence line to the south and got in a thicket that I thought we would never get out of. We came back through some weed fields and a single quail flushed in front of us. We never got a shot but it showed that we had really mixed those two coveys up.
We were going to hunt one more place. We loaded the dogs and turned the truck to the south. We only went about 200 yards when I knew if we didn’t turn around and find some gravel quick we might be there until spring. My truck temperature gauge was showing 27 degrees and that road was thawing. Without 4 wheel drive we wouldn’t have been able to drive out. Just north of where we had hunted we hit some gravel then went to the black top.
We checked the quail and they were in good health. With the cover, food and water that they have in these areas and with a good rest of the winter and spring should be lots of birds next year.
Sally is backing Luke. He is right in front of her.
Luke pointing quail.
Luke pointing a covey of quail.