Indiana Quail Success!

Most days, being an Indiana upland bird hunter will humble anyone—but yesterday, I was on Cloud 9. We were up early and pointed the car south in pursuit of wild quail on public land. After a fruitless first field, we decided how to dissect the next large field--a mix of prairie grass, milo, and briar patches that dotted irrigation ditches that S-curved through the field. Gunner decided to work some edge cover that snaked through a long draw where briars met standing beans. Gunner snapped his head around and his tail started wagging like crazy as a single bob jumped from the grass and taught him a lesson in wild bird steadiness. No more than we could get excited for finding a single, he took a couple more steps and froze with his tail stiff as a board yet vibrating like crazy--Gunner's sign that it is not old scent and the point is going to produce a bird 10/10 times (one of my favorite parts of dog work is spending so much time with them and learning to read their body language like a book). As the covey exploded from the brush, my hunting buddy knocked down a beautiful male putting us on the board. I had heard of the unparalleled excitement of a covey rise yet now I understood. Gunner was now running full bore and I could tell his mental game was just on point, no pun intended. Gunner's jingling bell turned to silence not five yards from me and as I stepped towards him, a single male about took my hat off, spinning me around and allowing me to have a nice straightaway shot on my first wild quail, in Indiana no less. As we moved down, Gunner slammed on a rock solid point, head high, paw up, body shaking, relentless drive in his eyes, just a statuesque point that will forever be burned in my memory as a dozen birds rose. A snapshot over the irrigation ditch and a female fluttered down with Gunner now on the retrieve.

I do not hunt because I am good at it. I hunt because there is nothing like setting your alarm earlier on your days off, driving through the countryside and setting that pup on the ground in hope of smelling burnt gunpowder. I hunt because to me, there is nothing like getting a puppy and caring for it, teaching it, (letting it teach you...), and having a best friend that has the same love for the uplands. Some days, everything just comes together--and days like yesterday are what make my feet hit the floor each and every morning.

Back at it tomorrow!