Vince Dye and I went on a quail hunt on the next to last day of the Missouri quail season. Vince has a friend that owns several farms near McFall, Missouri. We have hunted this area several times over the last ten years. This is one of my all time favorite places to hunt. We usually find several coveys of quail and it is open enough to watch the dogs hunt.
The temperature was well above freezing when we started with a north wind about 35 miles an hour. We started on a rolling hillside that fell off into a river bottom with corn fields that had been harvested. The hillsides were in CRP that had a lot of lespedeza in it. Perfect quail food.
We had 4 dogs hunting, Vince’s German shorthaired pointer, Roxie, and I had Dolly, Luke and Lucky my English setters. As we hunted through the CRP we saw several quail roosts. The owner of this property had told Vince that he had seen several coveys so our anticipation was real high.
Roxie pointed, looking into a brush pile beside a deep ditch that ran along the side of the corn field with the other three dogs backing. When she went on point she was about 85 yards ahead of us. We walked in front of her and nothing flushed. We released the dogs and they started trailing down through the ditch like the birds had run out and flushed. Later Vince thought he saw a bird in the air but nothing flushed that we could shoot at.
The next farm we hunted was owned by another friend of Vince’s near Polo, Missouri. This farm was CRP next to a harvested corn field with hedge rows in between. As we started down the hedge row about 30 turkeys started flushing out of the corn field. We got to the end of the hedge row and started across the back then down another hedge row on the other side. Vince told me that Roxie was on point about 165 yards ahead. When we got to her Luke and Lucky were honoring her.
I was on opposite side of the hedge row from the dogs. Vince walked in and a covey of quail flushed. After the quail flushed I saw a few birds fly into the hedge row as if to fly through. I focused on one bird that was coming my way. It almost flew into a limb on a large tree, turned to avoid that branch, almost ran into another, then turned and flew the opposite way. Needless to say, I never fired a shot.
Vince had one shot and dropped a quail in some chest high CRP. I crossed over to help find his dead bird. Roxie found the dead bird so we started in the direction the singles had flown. My Garmin GPS showed Luke on point about 75 yards away. He was standing in the chest high CRP looking back toward us as we walked in. We had a hen turkey between us and Luke and it flushed about 5 feet in front of Luke. It would have been an easy shot in Kansas but is not legal in Missouri.
We hunted some more good looking areas and although we saw some fresh quail tracks in the melting snow we never saw another quail. On real windy days I think the quail flush before the dogs get to them because all of the grass, weeds and brush is rattling and making noise and the quail can’t tell what noise is dangerous. This was the next to last day of the season and no one would be hunting these places the next day so there would be quail to raise birds for next year.