Late season Quail tactic #7, Trust your dog

Often times the gentleman’s bird becomes not so gentlemanly. After hard biting frosts and frozen precipitation, good cover declines. Add to the equation that there are many hungry predators including bird dogs, then you can then see why the gentleman’s bird no longer sits as predicted. He runs!

I remember one particular bird dog training clinic I gave a few years ago. After the clinic I invited … …one of the attendees to my lease for some first class quail hunting. Shortly after releasing the dogs we had a hard point. We moved towards the dogs who promptly relocated. I had a brace of experienced dogs on the ground so I knew that we were dealing with running birds. Both of the dogs knew just what to do.

As we would move up to the pointing dogs they would relocate. Over and over and over. Several times I commanded the dogs to whoa and not self-relocate, hoping I could get far enough out front to flush the birds but the dogs were right, the birds had long run off and I had no chance of flushing birds that were already a hundred yards ahead of where they were.

The gentleman in attendance just couldn’t believe we were chasing quail. “it’s gotta be pheasant” he shouted, “nope” I replied as we hustled forward staying tight to the dogs.

The gentleman fell behind several times while I laughingly looked back and said “c’mon, you gotta run like Forest!” He looked at me odd as he was huffing and puffing to stay up with me and the dogs. I said “you know, Forest, Forest Gump!” to which he feigned a brief smile and I hooted with laughter.

After multiple relocations the dogs finally pinned the covey down. Our tongues were hanging a bit like the dogs at this point (pardon the pun). As we approached the dogs a sudden explosive flush of about 20 wild bobs sliced through the air in every direction, more directions then the wind can blow. The absence of gun fire made me immediately look to my northern acquaintance who was wrestling with his safety and red faced.

Trust your dog and be prepared.

Happy huntin’

Dave