Luke pointing a single quail.
Tur Bo pointing where a prairie chicken had flushed from.
Blaze backing Luke.
I ran dogs on the Corp of Engineers land near Truman Lake yesterday. Missouri quail season open 14 days before Kansas season and I need some new places to hunt. There are thousands of acres of hunting land near Truman lake but with the wet spring a lot of the row crops didn’t get planted. The fallow fields are filled with cockle burrs. Not a good thing for English setters or my one English Cocker Spaniel. Lucky is still dealing with a sore foot and Dolly is in heat so they stayed home.
I’m not familiar with this area so I drove around until I found something that looked like it might have some quail on it. The area I stopped at had a harvested corn field next to an area that was filled with cockle burrs. I started through the cockle burrs not realizing that they were that thick. This was Rocky’s, my English cocker spaniel, first encounter with cockle burrs. His sides were covered and he tried to bite them. He would run a short way then try to snap at the burrs. Finally, he just kept going. When we got home I had to use the scissors on all of the dogs. I turned Luke, Blaze, Tur Bo and Rocky out to hunt. I had Garmin GPS units and Sport Dog e-collars on Luke and Tur Bo. Blaze had a Garmin GPS and a D.T. e-collar. Rocky at 4 months old had no extra collars.
I started the dogs into the wind across the field with all of the cockle burrs. After Rocky started having trouble with the burrs I knew the other dogs were too so I went back to the harvested corn field. We crossed to the west then started to the north through the harvested corn field. The corn had not been very good. The stalks were short and the cobs were small. Probably planted late due to the spring rains. Rocky and I went in a zigzag pattern as the other dogs ran the edges. At the back of the corn field was another grass field but with less cockle burrs than the first field we had tried to cross. We turned east to get to another corn field that I could see at a long distance.
There was a shallow draw running into the partially harvested corn field. The dogs and I started toward the draw. Luke was about 300 yards away from me when he went on point. I started, northeast through the corn field, toward him. I got within about 50 yards of him when the covey of quail flushed. I was watching him and he didn’t move until the birds flew. The quail were in the edge of the draw when they flushed and I saw where about 6 went. The dogs and I started toward where I saw the birds fly to.
Well before I got close Luke was on point again. The grass that they had flown into was real thick and tall. I was still a few yards behind Luke when the quail flushed ahead of him about 10 yards. He wasn’t moving the quail just flushed. He went about 10 yards and pointed again. This time I remembered to take a picture. (That is the first picture in this post. You can see how thick and tall the cover is.) While I was taking the picture with Blaze backing the quail he was pointing flushed. Another quail flew by me from the rear. I don’t think any dogs were back there.
We worked the area without finding any more birds. We went to the south along another draw to the road we had driven in on and hunted along the edge back toward the truck. This put us back into the first field that had so many cockle burrs. Rocky was used to them and hunted without paying much attention to them. There were a couple of short draws that ran into the fallow field. We went up one side then down the other on each of the draws. We hunted back to the truck without finding any more quail. It was warm and dry so I loaded the dogs and drove around looking at other places to hunt, when the season gets here.
There are a lot of fields around Truman Lake that in the past have been in row crops but the rainy spring kept the farmers out of the field. A lot of these fields will have beneficial weed seeds that are good for the quail but will be too thick for young birds to run through. They will also be hard on dogs and hunters.
I only remembered to take one picture on this trip. The first one on this post. I get too wrapped up in what the dogs are doing to remember to take pictures. I’m recycling some of the older pictures I have taken.
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Lucky pointing a pigeon.
Dolly pointing a pigeon.
Lucky pointing a pigeon.