Quail Hunting the Old South

It’s gotten to be a cliché in quail hunting. Bobwhite quail are gentlemen, hunted by gentlemen.

What a beautiful image. Gentlemen hunters, dressed to the nines, carrying double guns. A brace of pointers, working the managed fields of lespedeza, wire grass, and sweet pea, for a pair of gunners; with an old black dog sitting on the mule-drawn wagon, patiently waiting to retrieve on command. Dixieland pointers, after all, are too proud (or is it arrogant?) to pick up a dead bird.

The dogs lock up on birds that hold tight. The handler moves in for the flush. A quick left and right on the covey rise, then walk up a single or three, and move on to the next field and a new covey, with a new brace of dogs.

Compare this Nash Buckingham world to the reality of modern-day quail hunting. Too often this means dungaree clad hunters, carrying pumps and autos, busting the brush, often with no dog at all. The coveys---if you can dignify five running birds who then flush wild with the name covey---are few and far between. And, if possible, all five of them are killed. Then hop in the pick-up and try to find some more birds.

Who, indeed, are the gentlemen here? The birds? The hunters? Or neither?

The quail hunting myth that gunning Mr. Bob is a game played by and for gentlemen springs from the great southern quail plantations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

After the War Between the States, northern industrialists bought up vast acreages in the south, and turned them into quail hunting retreats. Here, palatial “camps” were built, huge kennels maintained, and the land managed for just one reason: to provide the owner and his guests high quality shooting. It was a world of hard-charging pointers, and dog handlers who did nothing else for a living, and hunters who approached points on horseback, and mule-drawn wagons carrying dog boxes, and fine sippin’ whiskey at day’s end.

A special etiquette grew up around these quail hunting plantations, which filtered down to just-folks quail gunners as well. Birds (in the South you just say “birds.” Lots of critters have feathers and wings, but “bird” means “Bobwhite” anywhere in Dixie) were special creatures, gunned by rules unspoken but obeyed by all.

Over time, it became economically unfeasible to maintain the plantations. By World War II, most of the private quail hunting plantations had been sold, the land put into agriculture or subdivisions. In some few cases, syndicates formed to buy, and retain, the hunting property for club members. But, by and large, the days of the private quail hunting plantations were numbered.

By and by, comes a revolution. Financially, it was all but impossible for an individual, or even group of individuals, to maintain a quail hunting plantation. They could, however, be run as commercial operations. Sort of specialized quail hunting preserves, where, for a fee---a rather hefty fee, at that---wingshooters could recapture the glory days when quail were gentlemen, hunted by gentlemen.

And so it is today. Throughout the south you can again find quail plantations where the lodge is antebellum---in spirit if not in fact; where fine dining is as much a part of the hunting experience as is #8 chilled shot; where well trained pointing dogs are dropped in braces, and you never shoot-out a covey; where mule-drawn wagons and horses transport dogs, and hunters, and handlers to fields managed for no other purpose but the gunning of Mr. Bob.

You won’t stumble on these quail hunting plantations. No siree! There are no billboards proclaiming them out on the highway. No garish signs pointing the way. You find them, instead, In Georgia, and the Carolinas, and Alabama, where the county maintenance road runs out, and the world seems little changed from the 1880s.

We’re on our way to one such plantation on the Georgia/Florida line. Even with precise instructions from the manager we’re not sure we’re on the right road. The signless blacktop had turned to dirt two or three miles back. We’re only a short ways from the nearest town, but this is the rural south, after all. Anyone out here already knows where he is, and needs no street signs to guide the way. Fields and piney woods and the very occasional farm house off in the distance the only proof we haven’t fallen off the map.

And then we do know we’re on the right track. Pulled off the side of the road is a mule-drawn wagon whose bed is made of dog boxes. Two hunters sit chatting with the driver. Just as we pull up, the three of them stiffen, coming to attention as they stare out in the field. This is the tableaux we’ve come to find.

There’s a pointer, head almost to the ground, back sloping up to his starched tail. He’s locked in place, not even a whisker quivering. Seven or eight feet behind is another pointer, nay, a statue, honoring the point. The two hunters move in with the handler, who flushes the birds. And the whole world turns into feathers as the covey---all 20 or 25 of them---bursts into the fall sky. Been a long time since I’ve seen that many birds in one spot. The guns ring out and four birds drop.

Oh, yeah! This must be the place.

Next morning would be our turn. With Wilson Tucker---seeming as large as either of the pulling mules---on the leathers, the wagon rolled up to the lodge where we waited with Steve and his 12-year old son, Joey. Stowing guns and shells in their racks, we scrambled aboard for the 15-minute ride to the game fields.

We’d be taking turns, as quail hunting tradition dictates. Two guns and a brace of dogs work the field, while the other hunters stay with the wagon. There’s a handler to work the dogs, and hard-flying birds to give handler, dogs, and guns a workout.

And I mean hard-flying. Both the kinds of birds released, and the methods of releasing them, yield birds that tend to covey up. Bust a covey and it’s hard to tell them from wild birds, the way they fly.

“Our guides are always reporting wild coveys,” the manager later told me with a wry grin, “but those really are our own wild-flying birds.”

If even the guides can’t tell the difference, then they may as well be wild birds. Things equal to equal things, as the mathematician said, are equal to each other.

Steve and Joey hunted the first half hour. Then it was our turn. Friend Wife slipped a pair of #8s into the French-made 16 gauge side-by-side I’d given her one Mother’s Day. I love talking about that gift to non-hunters. “Mother’s Day? Barbara? Oh, I just gave her a little French double, heh, heh, heh.”

I, in turn, dropped a pair of shells into my Parker, and we were ready to go. Almost too ready, as I came close to limiting out on the first covey rise.

The dogs locked up in a patch of broom sedge no bigger than my kitchen. When the covey came up I picked a bird, followed through, and touched just one trigger. It started raining quail.

“Who else shot?” I wondered out loud as the third or fifth bird hit the ground. Of course, nobody had. It was just the combination of crossing birds and an ounce and an eighth load of #8s through an open choke.

But suddenly, I really had fallen into a Nash Buckingham story.