Texas Track and Field

Bobwhite quail hunting is divided into two categories: the world and Texas. Texas quail hunting is as legendary as everything else down there and, like most of those other tall stories, it's true.

I hunted two days in late January in the brush country of west-central Texas, near Brownwood. This is the hub of Texas quail hunting. Three ecological zones, all good quail hunting areas, come together here--the Rolling Plains, Cross Timbers, and Edwards Plateau.

Except for the Rio Grande area of south Texas, this is where the bobwhite quail rules. The country ranges from flat pastures, dotted with mesquite, prickly pear cactus, and scrubby live oak, to rugged canyon country clogged with cedars and brush where a person could get lost forever.

My home, Missouri, about a quarter the size of Texas, has 89,000 hunters who average a million quail a year, sometimes close to two million, among the top harvests in the country. But only a few times in 40 years of Missouri quail hunting have I hunted as productively as I did in Texas.

IT'S VEXATIOUS TO PRAISE TEXAS about anything because Texans in general don't need to have their egos boosted, but true is true--Texas quail hunting is like sex: when it's good it's fabulous; when it's bad it's still pretty damn good.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has taken roadside counts of quail per 20-mile route since 1976. In 1993, some counts in the area we hunted ranged as high as 92. In the Rio Grande, several were over 100 and one county, McMullen, clocked in with 198 quail per 20-mile route. You'd have to drive slowly to keep from running over them.

There are reliable reports of 20-covey days in Texas and rumors of hunters who put up 42 coveys in a day. An Abilene hunter told us he drops a couple of pointers, follows them on horseback, and routinely puts up 15 coveys or so...in two or three hours.

We were content with 12 to 15 coveys in a long hard day (we started about 8:30 a.m. and quit at dark, which was after 6 p.m.). I've heard war stories from Missouri old-timers who allow as how they used to put up 20 coveys a day--but they're the same people who used to walk five miles to school through hip-deep snow. A dozen covey day is outstanding anywhere, any time, any era.

WE SPLIT INTO TWO GROUPS on the first day, one with three, the other four hunters. One group raised a dozen coveys, the other 13. That's 25 coveys among seven hunters. The Texas limit is 15 birds daily and a good shooter will have no trouble limiting with that many flushes. I'm not a good shooter.

There were three of us from out-of-state and two local hunters in the party. Mike Jordan and Kevin Howard work for Winchester. Mickey Bush is a Brownwood bulk-mail carrier and Randall McAnally is sales manager for a local auto dealership. The two of them guide quail hunters as a sideline and are dog poor (McAnally has a duke's mixture of bird dogs, including mostly pointers, several English setters, a German shorthair, and a Brittany--total 19).

One of his pointers hunted with Bush, Kevin, and me the first day. We saw it on point ahead and hurried to catch up. The dog was locked on a herd of blocky feeder calves. It doesn't take long to get to know Texas quail hunters well enough to rag them unmercifully. If there's anything Texans are used to, it's raw kidding.

"Pointers aren't generally considered among the versatile breeds," I said to Randall at the lunch break as he glowered and wondered what was coming. "The dog has to be able to make game of many species, not just quail. Your pointer is that noble exception. He not only pointed a large covey of cows; he was staunch on them and really tail-high stylish. Then later on he locked on an armadillo, must have been 30 yards off. Now if we could just teach him to hunt quail..."

Late-season Texas bobwhite quail run. You expect that with blue quail, but bobwhites are supposed to be gentleman birds that politely squat for a flubbery-nosed pointer until the hunters arrive.

Some few coveys did sit, but more reacted like spooky pheasants and we never did figure out how to combat their foot speed. The best bird dog for those birds would be a pointing greyhound, the appropriate footgear spiked track shoes.

I ran up one covey with a wind sprint that would have made my high school track coach proud. Didn't matter--the birds flushed 25 yards out and I managed to miss as I huffed and wheezed. Kevin saw another covey running and tried an end around. He wasn't close when they became airborne.

PROBABLY THE IDEAL WAY TO HUNT QUAIL with roadrunner genes is with one careful dog and no more than two hunters who are willing to keep quiet as they hunt. Work the areas slowly, the way you would work late-season pheasants. Because the birds often flush well-out, use high-base loads. Some use No. 6 shot, but No. 7 1/2 or No. 8 should work, too. When you hunt with Winchester people, you use Winchester shells. We used the relatively new Hunter load in No. 8 shot.

Like blue quail, the running bobs do so mostly in coveys; once you get them broken up, the scatters handle better for a dog. Singles shooting in my home, Missouri, is almost a lost art. Show-Me quail tend to be brush birds that vanish further into the tangle and are never seen again after the covey flush.

Not so the Texas birds. They often are easy to spot down because of the open country and they'll generally be where they hit or pretty close-by. For close-holding singles, slip a No. 9 shell in the first barrel, back it up with a longer-range load.

Hunt roost areas early in the morning and later in the afternoon. The birds roost in undisturbed grassy fields. In hot weather, quail will lay up in cover during the day, but when it's cold, the birds could be anywhere.

Brush hunting is tough--most of the stuff has vicious spikes and is like pushing through concertina wire. Let the dogs do the work. This is country for big-running dogs and it's wise to let them control the hunt if they're bird-smart.

EXCEPT IN THE COLDEST WEATHER, it's prudent to have a dog trained to leave snakes alone. There are plenty of rattlesnakes anywhere there are quail. Most hunters also wear snakeproof chaps. I'm not a fan either of hot weather hunting or of venomous reptiles, so I'd much prefer to hunt late-season--there's less competition then anyway.

Even in mid-January, it wasn't cold. The daytime high was close to 60 and the first day was heavily overcast, threatening rain. A couple of times, a fine mist frosted the gun. I was wet to the knees from wading through grass.

But bum weather is a minor inconvenience to a quail hunter. I've hunted on a sheet of ice, in sleet and snow storms, and in steady rain because the alternative, which was not hunting, was far worse.

Don Wilson, quail biologist for Texas, says private land access for hunters is tough even for Texans. The going rate for a season quail lease is $1/acre. Wilson says for widespread public access, it would take $5/acre. "Give landowners enough money and they'll do it," he says. But a season lease on a thousand acres would be $5,000.

That's beyond the means of most hunters. Even if you split it among a half-dozen hunters, that's still nearly $1,000 each. And a thousand acres will not hold enough quail to give outstanding hunting to a half-dozen hunters. An out-of-stater isn't likely to hunt Texas often enough to justify a season lease.

VISITING QUAIL HUNTERS SIMPLY MUST have a local contact. One possibility is through outdoor groups, such as Quail Unlimited. Trading hunts or fishing trips is a deal often worked by enterprising hunters--offer what you have for what they have. Other possible local contacts are the Chamber of Commerce, the county Extension Office, or the local ASCS office. The Chamber might know local quail guides; the ASCS and Extension offices should know local landowners agreeable to fee hunting.

The price for a guide is likely to be a minimum of $250/day. Landowners will lease daily hunting rights for $50-$100/gun. If you're paying that, you should know the place holds birds. The advantage of a guide is that he already has hunting land set aside and knows the bird situation.

Because of the difficulty of access, much Texas quail hunting is underused. Some outstanding areas may never see a quail hunter. The state seems at a loss to know how to open private land to hunters and has little public land to satisfy the demand.

Access to public land is complex. There are two types of land. On one, you buy an annual permit which allows access to any of that kind of area; on the other, you apply for permits, either at the area on a first-come, first-serve basis, or by registration. Applying for hunts is slightly more difficult than Form 1040, long version.

THERE IS SOME PUBLIC LAND in the top hunting areas (most of it is in south Texas and none is in the Cross Timbers area).

Check the quail prospects before you make a trip. There's no point in paying big bucks for hunting if it's an off-year. Texas hunting, like any other, isn't always great. More years than not are good, but there are inevitable busts, usually the result of drought.

From 1987 through 1991, drought dropped the quail kill from a high of 2.8 million in 1982 to 778,000 in 1990. Hunter numbers dropped, too. That's the inevitable response to a lack of quail. Only the hard-core hunter continues when the hunting is slow.

But because of mild winters, Texas quail bounce back quickly. Just two years after that low ebb of 778,000, hunters took 1.9 million birds.

Mickey told me of a place where he'd worked hard to put up two or three coveys in a long day's hunt during a dry year, but which produced a bounty of birds the next year which was wet.

There is the old saw about statistics and damn lies. Texas hunters average about 1.6 million quail a year, but Kansas, Missouri, and Tennessee all are statistically as good or better. Oklahoma claims more than three million quail in a good year.

Perhaps the Texas estimate is well below the actual kill. Either that or Texas is being modest, which seems inconceivable. There are an estimated 238,000 quail hunters in Texas, but Don Wilson thinks that may be too low. "It could be 250,000," he says. Even a quarter-million quail hunters in a state the size of Texas is piddling.

The chart since 1976, especially in the Cross Timbers, shows a real rhythm in quail numbers. Peaks came at five-year intervals, in 1977, 1982, 1987, and 1992. Slumps were in 1979, 1984, and 1990.

TEXAS IS A HUNTING STATE, especially for deer. A car rental agency in a Cross Timbers town has a prominent sign: "Please do not leave animal parts in rental vans." A Missouri friend hunted quail in Brown County a few years back. "Every vehicle in town had dog boxes in it," he says. "The motel had a sign saying 'No Dogs In Rooms,' but I didn't see many of them in the boxes."

My second day began just like the first. My boots were stiff from being wet and still damp inside and fresh socks wilted quickly.

The sky was overcast, always threatening rain but never quite getting to it. We ran up five coveys by lunch, then headed for a 200-acre patch with a wooded draw, pastureland, and a Sudan grass stubblefield.

The hyperactive dogs shot out of their boxes and went through a huge covey like a well-known substance departs a goose before we got our guns loaded.

The birds scattered up and down the wooded draw and I managed to miss a couple of ruffed grouse shots as the birds flushed into the brush. It was like being back in Missouri. If I want to miss birds, I can do it at home.

Then one of the pointers slipped under the fence and pointed in the stubblefield. There wasn't much more cover than in a parking lot. Kevin and I went to the immobile dog and a pair of quail flushed. He killed one and I killed the other. There would have been no excuses for missing. It was the most open quail shot I've had in a half-century.

Before we got the birds retrieved, another dog was on point, again in the open field. Another quail. We jumped a half-dozen quail before we got back in the brush, suicidal birds who took a desperate gamble at hiding in plain sight like Edgar Allen Poe's purloined letter. It didn't pay off.

By late afternoon, the clouds were beginning to break up. A shaft of sunlight lit a live oak, turning its sullen dark bulk to deep rich green. Our hunter orange blazed like sparks from a hot fire.

Now the clouds overhead were gone, but a brooding dark gray bank lay heavily over the country to the north, promise that foul weather was waiting to pounce.

IT WAS ALMOST DARK when we made the last round and reached the trucks. I was more than happy to quit. I hadn't shot a limit either day--a function of poor shooting, not opportunity--but it didn't matter.

I had a comfortable weight in my shell vest and a rich weariness to complement it. We'd earned the perks of the marathon quail hunter, a hot shower and a steak dinner.

The shower was better than Heaven on all but the best days, the steak was Texas good, and my sleep was deep and dreamless.

The airline lost my luggage going home.

Copyright (c) 1995 Joel M. Vance. All Rights Reserved.

Home | Library | Hunting | Wingshooting