Deer season in Kansas is finally over. So its time to get back to hunting. I loaded 6 dogs, Dolly, Tur Bo, Annie, Blaze, Luke and Lucky into the truck and headed to some walk-in properties near Marysville, Kansas.
I usually park on the east side of this farm but it was above freezing and the mud roads were extremely slick so I turned Dolly, Luke and Tur Bo out on the west side. Within 150 yards of the truck I saw a covey of quail flying back over the truck. I could see Dolly and Tur Bo and they had not flushed them but Luke was not in sight. Shortly afterwards I saw him and he was excited. He’s been holding his birds lately and I didn’t see what happened so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.
We were closer to an area that over the years I had often found birds so I marked the birds and hunted on to the east. This farm was mostly CRP with soy bean fields scattered along the bottom land near a creek. We worked the CRP around the edge of the bean field as well as going up the draws that ran into the CRP without finding anything so we circled around to where the first bunch had flown to.
We had been up and down where I thought they had flown to and I was about ready to give up when I checked the Garmin GPS and Luke was on point about 45 yards away. The tip of his tail was bleeding and that was the first thing I saw when I found him. He was standing in the edge of the CRP pointing into the brush along the creek. The bird flushed into the brush and I made a lucky shot. Luke ran in and picked something up from the ground and I turned and walked away telling him to fetch. He had grabbed a mouth full of snow. I had to go back into the brush and get the dogs back in there. Finally Dolly found the bird.
Luke
We checked the area but that was the only one we found so we loaded up and went to another farm.
The next farm we went to had about 30 acres of small trees with weeds and brush in a draw that ran into a soy bean field. Across the road from it was a large corn field. Luke is in good shape and I had decided to see if he could hunt all day so I put his GPS collar on him first, turned him loose and started putting Lucky’s collar on and noticed Luke standing on the edge of the road almost on point. He looked like he was on point but his tail was wagging. I turned Blaze and Annie loose, grabbed my gun and started into the brush.
All 4 dogs were excited and hunted hard all the way through the brush all the way to the soy bean field on the other side. We turned, hunted the edge of the bean field to a hay field, turned and started back toward the truck. I checked the GPS when we got close to the road and it showed Luke on point. I found him pointing into a large cedar tree with Annie backing. I knew whichever side I was on the birds would come out the other, but I went to the other side. When I got to the other side Annie passed Luke and started trailing through the hanging branches on the cedar. Instead of quail a wounded deer came out. She had some blood on her left shoulder and she was moving like she was sore but okay. I called the dogs in and headed to another farm.
The next farm was only 80 acres but I had found quail on it a couple of years ago. When I was here before it was about one third CRP with a good fence row and a brushy creek running through the middle but now the CRP had been planted in soy beans and the fence row was not very wide. We hunted east down the fence row to the creek to get the wind right as we hunted the creek. I had turned Lucky, Dolly and Luke loose. We were almost to the end of the creek when Dolly went on point. Dolly isn’t very big and she was standing in some grass that was taller than she is. She was looking in toward the brush along the creek and as I walked in a quail about 30 yards away flushed but she never moved. When I got to her 3 quail flushed into the brush along the creek. I made good on the one shot I had. Dolly retrieved it from the ice in the creek.
We continued down the creek and Dolly pointed again. When I walked in a single flushed out over the bean field trying to get behind us, going from right to left and I dropped it. Dolly retrieved it to hand. We hunted to the end of the creek then went to the other side and hunted back most of the way to the end then back again without finding anything else.
When we got to the truck Luke was still going strong. He had hunted each place I had turned dogs out. He’s young, strong with lots of stamina. I’m planning a road trip after the New Years Day. That may find out how long he can go.