Who's Quail Hunting this weekend

Anyone going to hunt the opener this weekend. I'm guiding hunt this weekend. Should be good

I'll be at the matador this weekend. Hopefully it's a barrel melter.

Rain is in the forecast for the weekend. I'm going out Monday.

I have Sunday and Monday off so would love to go. Just don't know where there is birds except in the Big Bend area and don't think I'll have time to drive that far.

It depends on UPS and my Garmin T-5 and dog boots getting here from Mississippi.

Dog has a bicep tendon strain, at least that's what the vet believes it is. He will be on rest for the next 10 days, and then I'll see how he's coming along.
Gonna look at the weather before I make a decision on this weekend. A little rain is fine, but if its storming I'll wait till during the week.

Make boots from motorcycle tubes. If they run big enough for gps, leave the boots off for first couple hours

I'll be out this weekend...rain or shine, but hoping for light rain

Looking at my place in June you wouldn't think I would need a dog tracker but they say it's grown quite high. As for letting him run bare foot, the grass burrs I found in June are from H*LL!! I can't do that to him

If your gonna be up by Fort Worth holler at me, I will let you borrow my GPS. There is no reason to miss the opener! Youth weekend for deer so we will be looking for some venison this weekend....

Generous offer, thanks

Not gonna hunt if the weather is too bad. Supposed to be some serious rain on Sat. I'll be taking out an older gentleman on his own place. If Sat doesn't work out, we'll go next week.

God Bless the return of the wild birds. Hoping the rain is not a problem for anyone and it has always been difficult for me to complain about rain. Have a good season and send your friends who can't travel or have no dog out for a Close to Dallas fast and easy Quail Hunt.

Safe travels and straight shooting.


Great time

We have been seeing quite a few birds so I hope to have some luck soon!

I already know it's way too muddy where we want to go.
We're thinking the 7th.

On our way up to the matador right now. Pouring down rain in Vernon. Radar shows that Childress is clear.

We're right behind you TX Hunter. Loading up the dawgs up now.

Headed to the Panhandle in the AM

Did some drivin around the matador this afternoon and saw 3 coveys 15 birds strong atleast in about 30 min. That's just cruisin the roads. Also, you'd better have a 4x4 pickup. Roads aren't terrible but not great. I think they'll dry up quick.

Any morning reports?

10 coveys 4-blues 6-bobs. All big coveys. Nice morning

Nice.

This is just wonderful. It beats the snot out of last years early reports.

We intended to hunt a lot more acreage but we only ended up stopping at 3 farms because the birds where so thick

Crappy pic but the best I took

So that's what blue quail look like....

Does the heart good to hear this kinda stuff.

That's awesome. Good job.

How did you get your access?

Good friends

Nope. Great friends. I have one of those.

reeltexan if it was down here that you were talking about, was wwaaayyy muddy, had another 4".

Pushed 21 coveys and shot a 5 man limit in 5 hours in the panhandle saturday morning.

Limits in Three Rivers. Also rats galore, giving my dog fits.

A 5 man limit?? Wow....that's basically 5 coveys gone. I'm a little more conservative than that.

We don't shoot many anymore.

Maybe you should take up another sport.. Like golf. That way you won't have to shoot anything. That's why they have limits. Not everyone feeds their dogs all year because they like to feel superior watching them work. Where I grew up we kept dogs because we liked to shoot and eat quail. When I was a kid we shot a limit every day of season and feasted on that game almost every night. All our neighbors ate good too. Why not kill out when there's plenty of birds.

21 coveys, So that only comes to 3 to 4 birds taken from each covey.
We only take 1- 2 birds per covey, dependent on the covey size.
If the covey sizes are really large, I don't see taking 3-4 bids as a big deal.

The thing is you can shoot out a lease early in the season and not have huntable coveys at the end of season.

What part of the panhandle if you don't mind me asking? That's awesome, don't blame you one bit for killing a 5 man limit. If the state's millions of dollars of research says we can shoot 15 and they'll still be fine I bet we're ok....

I bet they do not think a thing about shooting non pointed birds.

Hunted a Briscoe pasture near Fowlerton (@ 30 miles west of Tilden). Saturday morning was wet, muddy, we got a slow start 12 coveys for the day. Sunday we moved 23 coveys.

I quit shooting unpointed birds in around 1990.

I think a lot of you guys on this forum might be too country club to hunt with me and my group.

Lets just call us purist. We don't have the unlimited amount of land available that you seem to have.

I do understand shooting blues anyway you can.

Lots of birds, not lots of shooting. We probably busted 12 or 13 coveys, only two pointed. The dogs could not sent worth a darn. Not only were they not finding coveys, they couldn't find the singles or the dead...I'm starting to believe the bit about a hard rain washing the scent off the birds for a day or two.

What area?

Hunted matador this weekend. We were severely handicapped by not having any dogs. Things started off very slow both mornings. Seemed like once 8:30 rolled around we started seeing birds and we were hearing shooting. We moved 10 coveys Saturday and 7 Sunday. We killed more birds than we recovered. Recovery rate was terrible due to the THICK vegetation. Shooting doubles proved to be worthless as I never could find the second bird due to the brush. Ended up with 13 birds in my bag. I know without a doubt I killed well over 20. Incredibly frustrating. First and last time I ever go without a dog. We had a lot fun though and that's what we'll remember.

Thank you. I'm not the kind of guy thats going to shoot a bob off of a fence post by any means, but when you hunt 75% blues you tend to get frustrated when they give you the slip all the time. I do really love to hunt bobs in thick cover and shoot pointed birds, but I won't pass up a single that I saw fly into a thicket either.

That is super frustrating to shoot one and not find it. Did y'all come across any pigs or snakes? Always makes me nervous to take my dogs down there especially before the first freeze.

No hogs or snakes thankfully. Jumped tons of deer though. Gonna hunt till noon today and hopefully get some more.

So you admittedly killed over your limit?

Over the course of two days. Not in one day.

Ahhh my bad.

To each his own. I like shooting birds just as much as the next guy, but admittedly, for me, it's about dog work. Sounds like you must have access to a lot of land to be able to shoot limits every day and feel good about it. And I love eating quail, finally found 2-3 good recipes to use so I can rotate them. Very good eating. And when you were a kid (depending on your age) there probably was a ton of birds. I guess I'm still leary about shooting limits like that.

And I have enough hobbies so I'll say no to golf. I suck anyway, bad. So I'll stick to team roping and duck hunting.

We found 7 coveys in two hours this morning. Pointed only 4. We had to pick up several times to get out of the weeds. I don't think we could have made an hour of it if we had been walking.

Sorry about that.
We were at Matador

As others have said, the only thing more impressive than the number of birds is the thickness of the cover.
Hard walking and very tough to find downed birds.
On The bright side, we did not see a single snake...but the majority of the time you could not see the ground either.

It was one of those strange hunts where the dogs did not bring much to the table, but working them is what it's all about and its always great!!!