At 5am Thursday morning, 6 of us left from Decatur Tx and made the 10.5 hr drive to Cameron Quail Preserve near Aliceville, Al. We arrived at the lodge, met John and Rush Cameron and their mother, Ms. Betty. Super good folks with all the normal down home southern hospitality. We got settled in our rooms and gathered around the fire in the back yard while Rush cooked our ribeyes for supper. The backyard was right on the banks of the Tombigby River. What a place.







The next morning, we had a great breakfast and headed out to our first hunt. For the first day and the next morning, we all 6 rode on the wagon and hunted in turns, 3 at a time. We managed 60 birds the first morning and 47 that afternoon. Rush handed our birds off to the bird cleaners (his kids) and we all went back to the lodge for rest, relaxation, drinks and supper. We would hunt about 3 hrs in the morning and about the same in the afternoon, evening. We had fried quail, mashed potatoes with gravy and green beans for supper on Friday night. The food was so good, we usually managed to hurt ourselves with it. Here are some pics of the first day.




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The lady in the red T-shirt was Rush Camerons wife and our muleskinner for the first day. Listening to her southern accent was like honey dripping from an angel's mouth.
The next day we hunted that morning with John Cameron and his 14 yr old son drove the wagon for us. We had all 6 again and switched out hunters 3 at a time. Between us, we managed 53 more bird and watched some great dogs at work. We came in for a hamburger lunch and a short siesta and were back in the field about 3 pm. For that evening, we split up into two groups of three, with John's 16 yr old son Daniel as our guide and John heading up the other group. We had a friendly competition (read "serious chit talk") set up as to who could bring back the most birds. Daniel work his tail off for us and we did him justice with our shooting. We managed to pull out 103 bird in about 3 hrs of hunting while the other group only bagged 48 birds. I'll be able to rag them for months about that one. The weather was not what you really want for quail hunting. 84 the first day and 88 the second really took its toll on dogs and hunters. We lost a lot of downed birds due to the dogs not being able to scent them for panting so hard. We switched out lots of dogs and still worked them really hard. This was by no means your typical canned hunt. The place is almost 3000 acres and set up strictly for quail hunting. No other activities taking place here. Tons of hard flying birds in coveys anywhere from 20-50 birds each. This is probably the closet I will come to hunting wild birds for the rest of my life, if we(as conservationists and hunters) are not able to do anything about the current quail situation. I will be looking forward to my trip next year. The only drawback is the long drive but we did manage to break up the monotony with a stopover at the casino's on the Mississippi River coming and going. Check out the tug pushing the barges.

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Bird hunting without my dogs does not interest me in the least. Nor does being guided on a pen raised hunt.

Rick

Yes, and it isn't always easy!
I was along on this trip and really enjoyed it.
It was a long haul out and the weather was way too warm.
I have had the privledge of getting my own dogs into 35-40 coveys of wild bobs a day and to that it does not compare.
I have also hunted many days only to find one or two coveys and elect not to shoot.
But with the way wild bird hunting has been in the past couple of years. It's either this or nothing. When friends made the offer, I elected to go!

Are you the one who looks like Brad Pitt?

I didn't see anybody looking like Brad Pitt on there. We are all too fat. I'm glad you're such a purist and would never stoop to such a sleezy hunt. I, however, am just a dang redneck and I'll do it every chance I get. I sure won't find the same opportunity around home anymore.