Mid-Season Updates

I feel like I am seeing less posts of quail hauls on the forum this season than in the past couple of years. Are you guys seeing less birds? I had a couple of good walks this weekend in Throckmorton. Saturday I put 2 dogs on the ground for about an hour after sitting in the deer blind and pushed 2 coveys of 12-15 birds. Sunday was much of the same. I walked a different area, this time with 3 dogs out, and moved 3 coveys of the same size in just under an hour and a half. I have noticed that I am hearing much less calling and have seen no birds when driving the roads. They seem to be along the creek and in the thick stuff.

Here's a picture of Sunday's haul. 4 birds in 3 rises, no chasing singles.

I think an early trend this season is the birds have definitely rotated to be closer to thicker cover.

Weather has been pretty crappy and not real conducive to going out and hitting it hard, hopefully will be changing over next week or so.

I agree that the weather has been finicky thus far, although we could not have asked for better conditions on Sunday morning. We had damp ground from the evening showers, temps in the low-40s, and a south wind blowing at 5-10mph.

Define pushed and moved. What breed of dogs?

Bill, I define a push as a covey we cause to flush with no point and a move as covey we flush as a result of a point. Running GSPs.

Bill, I took some time to read several Gene Hill articles this morning with my cup of coffee. I am too young to have read his articles when they were written, but every one I read has passed the test of time and are as relevant to the way hunting and bird dogs make me feel as I'm sure they were to you back when they were first written. I just wanted to say thank you for having that quote in your signature because it sure brightened my morning.

Well there are less birds but I’ve been finding bigger covies lately. I went the weekend before last and got on 5 coveys that were 20 or close to 20 birds.
Yes push if what we say when we fail

I also noticed I ran her a long time with nothing and then found an with a little different cover and she got on 4 coveys in a row there. It could just be my lease but it seemed like that in the public land I ran as well.

I would add "watching a good dog work"

Thanks a bunch for your kind words. My friend with the red setters liked it enough to fly an artist down from Utah to hunt and do a painting.

Here is what he came up with.

I have seen you post that on here before. I thought it was beautiful work then, and I think it is beautiful work now. Do you remember the name of the artist?

Zack Frazier.

Here is one from his gallery.

It's been so warm in our part of the State that we didn't make a hunt until last Friday.

Results were much the same as last year. Very good but not great.
Got some really good work from the new pup, she showed a lot of style and ability for a young dog.
The older dogs did a fine job and we all had a great time.

Have another coming up on a huge ranch near Quanah at month's end. I didn't get to hunt it last season because I was ill so I'm excited about it.

We hunted NW of San Angelo last Tues-Thursday. Afternoons were awfully warm so we only hunted the last hour each day. We found 7-10 coveys each day almost all bobs, only found 1 covey of blues. That whole country needs a good rain or snow. About half the birds I cleaned were young birds so they had a least one decent hatch this year. I have a couple of pictures of our brit puppy on point if I can figure out how to post them I will add them. Hope to get back out their next month.

Hunted Duval co. last Sat/Sun with cold, rainy, foggy, weather helping.
The day and a half we hunted produced 37 coveys on Saturday and 11 coveys Sun before noon.

I have been hunting southwest Oklahoma and saw quite a few birds on the roads in August. Haven't seen any birds on the roads. I have been out three times. All the times it was either windy and dry, or just plain dry. I think there is a lot of birds on the 1800 acres I have to hunt. There is tons of food and cover. I think the reason why I haven't been stacking up birds or moving a lot of birds is because the scenting conditions have been horrible. Yes the birds are more at their 10 year average in SW OK but we should still be finding them. You cant find them though if the dogs cant smell them.

That's my 2 cents on why, at least where I am at, people haven't had wild success yet.