Dolly pointing in a plum thicket
Lucky pointing in a plum thicket
Luke
The second day of the Kansas quail season, I hunted in the Emporia area, again. The first farm I hunted was an 80 acre place that was 1/4 mile wide and 1/2 mile deep. It had a good fence row on both sides that isn’t visible from the road. There is also a good draw with lots of cover that crosses, from east to west, over the hill out of sight of the road.
The wind was really blowing for the second day in a row. I turned Lucky and Tur Bo out with the Sport Dog e-collars and Garmin GPS collars on. We started on the east side going south down the fence row. Both dogs were hunting the wrong side of the fence because that was where the cover was. When we got close to the draw they came back and hunted down the draw to the west.
We got to the west side without finding anything and hunted the cover in that fence row to the north until we ran out of cover. Then we retraced our steps and hunted to the south to the end of the property. We went back across the back of the farm to the east. As I hunt I check the GPS real often. When I checked it Lucky was on point about 100 yards ahead of me.
When I got close to him, he was just across the fence off the property. The quail flushed before I got to the brush in the fence row he was pointing into. They got up off the south east corner and flew to the south east so none of them came onto the walk-in property. Tur Bo had been backing Lucky so when the quail flushed he chased a little ways then came back and got excited with the quail smells. We hunted back to the truck without finding anything else. I loaded the dogs and drove to another farm in the Kansas Atlas of walk-in properties.
This was another 80 acre farm that was 1/2 mile long from east to west and 1/4 mile deep. I turned Dolly and Luke out with e-collars and GPS collars on. We hunted south to the end of the property then turned west and hunted to the road. There was a draw that ran on a diagonal from where I had parked the truck on the north east corner to the south west corner. We turned and hunted the draw back toward the truck.
About half way back to the truck Dolly and Luke started trailing. One or the other would point then move. I slowed down to watch them. I heard something and turned around. Two quail got up somewhere ahead of us and flew near us but I didn’t get a shot. The dogs were birdy all the way to the road and Luke even hunted across the road without finding anything. We hunted on to the road then went back in the direction the 2 quail had flown without finding anything. We continued on up the draw until we got back to the truck. I loaded the dogs the ate my lunch on the way to the next farm.
I wrote about the afternoon hunt yesterday in the Hunting Dog Injuries. After Tur Bo got hung in the fence I went on home to get him sewed up. Had he not got hurt I would have hunted another farm. Luke and Dolly were ready to go.
I had hunted 7 farms in 2 days and had found 7 coveys of quail. That was much better than the last few years. The wind was really blowing, even for Kansas, and the birds didn’t hold very well but I had a lot of dog work. Other than Tur Bo getting hurt it was a good 2 days. I will be back.