I can remember my Granddad J.O. Ash telling me stories about hunting quail with a mutt dog. He had no problem finding all he needed for my Grandmother to fix for supper and then some. That little Heinz 57 mutt was named “Buggah.” No fancy bloodlines or training, he just went with my granddad and just got the hang of it. No fancy pointing or blind retrieves. He would just get “birdie” when he smelled them – alive or dead.
This was in Madisonville, about 100 miles north of Houston. There were so many quail you didn’t even need a dog, much less two or three. Madisonville was so small, everyone knew everyone, and finding a place to hunt or fish was not a problem. All you had to do was ride around in the pasture for a few minutes and you would bust a covey and go hunt them up.
To have a dog was a bonus when it came time to find a downed bird. To have a dog that would work and find a covey was a luxury. I’m 53 now, and this was 80 or so years ago. Times have changed.
If you are fortunate enough to hunt in some areas of South or West Texas, you have a chance to have some good quail hunts, provided Mother Nature lets you. If you don’t, there are an increasing number of commercial hunting operations where you could go and hunt quail, both wild and pen raised. I know the pen raised birds don’t fly as strong as wild birds. However, I’m not so sure most people could keep up with wild birds. Based on what Vicki and I have seen on some of our corporate hunts, most people have $5,000 worth of equipment and 5 cents worth of talent when it comes to hitting a quail, regardless of its heritage.
A good way to practice for quail hunting is to go to your local gun club and shoot a couple of rounds of trap. If possible, move up close to the trap house (within 3-5 yards) and with your gun in the normal carry position, shoot some birds.
Practice mounting the gun and breaking targets from an unmounted starting position. (Muzzles pointed straight ahead above the horizon and above the dog’s head and the gun butt tucked loosely under your armpit.) It is important to focus on the target before you move and mount the gun. When you mount the gun, it should be mounted to the target so the shot can be taken the instant the gun touches your cheek.
Perhaps the mistake that’s made the most frequently, even by some experienced hunters, is to mount the gun first and then try to find the bird(s). If the gun is mounted to the bird, you always maintain focus on the bird. This, coupled with a good gun mount, increases the probability that your shot(s) will be successful. Vicki and I see shooters with this problem, not only on quail hunts, but dove and duck and goose hunts as well. Learn to mount the gun in one flowing movement to what you are looking at, and you will be surprised at how may fewer shots it takes to fill a limit.
Perhaps the most important (and most difficult) thing in quail hunting is focusing on one bird when there are ten in the air at the same time. You can practice on this at the trap range.
Instead of looking for the target as it emerges out of the trap house in front of you, look at something on the ground 20 to 30 yards in front of you – a rock, a clump of grass, a piece of broken clay or something – and keep your eyes still. When you call for the target, let your eyes go to the movement. Picking up the target in your peripheral circle first will enable you to get laser focus on the target as it comes out of the trap house.
Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? When your eyes focus out from near to far, it takes two movements. And when they focus in from far to near, it only takes one movement.
Try this. Focus on an object 10 to 20 feet away. Extend your arm straight out in front of you with your thumb pointing straight up. Align your thumb and the object. Focus on the distant object and look back at your thumb. Notice that it was instantly sharp when your eyes got there.
Focus on you thumb for a second or two, and look back at the distant object. You will feel your eyes make two moves. They find the object and then focus on it. Play with it and you will see what we mean when we say your eyes come back in focus in one move and when they focus out – it takes two moves.
This is extremely important in hunting quail. Watching the dogs work is 90 percent of the enjoyment in quail hunting. However, when they go on point and you move in to flush the birds, focus on something 30-40 yards ahead of the dogs. In doing this, you have improved the probability that your eyes will focus quickly on one of the birds in the covey rise. After you have focused on one bird, all that is left is to mount the gun to the target and pull the trigger.
This may seem awkward and time consuming at first, but with a little practice you will be amazed at how easy it becomes! Also, when you begin focusing on one bird, the birds seem to fly slower!
When you hunt quail, you walk a lot. Invest in a good pair of boots! I prefer something with a Gore-Tex liner, because the grass in the morning is usually heavy with dew. If you don’t have snake boots, then a good pair of snake leggings or chaps is a good idea. Not just for snake protection, but also for protection against thorns and cactus.
Vicki and I always wear thin leather gloves. Baseball batting gloves are a good choice. They are tight fitting and offer your hands another layer of protection against thorns and limbs when chasing quail through a mesquite thicket.
A quail gun needs to be light and quick to point. For this reason, Vicki and I prefer a 20ga. or 28ga. over and under field gun. Field guns are made light so that you can carry them a lot, and target guns are made heavy to shoot a lot and carry very little.
My first choice is a Beretta 686 Silver Pigeon 20ga. over/under with 30” barrels. It is light and with the longer barrels it seems to balance and point effortlessly. It is equipped with interchangeable chokes. If the birds are holding and flushing close, I will typically use a skeet choke in the bottom barrel for the first shot and an improved cylinder in the top for the second shot. If conditions change and the birds begin to run and flush further in front of the dogs, I can quickly change to an improved cylinder and a modified.
For those of you whose arms seem to be getting shorter and find it hard to read the fine print on the side of a choke tube, I would suggest to go to Briley Manufacturing and get a set of Spectrum Chokes. They are equipped with color-coded bands on the end of the choke, along with large laser engraved letters that make it easy to identify which choke is which.
What I’m about to suggest may seem a little strange, but hear me out. When Vicki and I hunt quail, we use #6 shot. I realize that you can kill quail easily with 8s, or 9s for that matter.
Two things happen when you use #6s. First, when you hit one, he falls dead, making it easier for you or the dog to retrieve it. Second, when you eat them, you don’t have to worry about biting down on a piece of shot. The #6’s tend to go through the bird or lodge against the breastbone, making them easy to avoid when eating.
Just last week I got an email from John Martin, one of our students in California, about his first quail hunt this year. Using 7s in his 20ga., he remarked that all the birds he harvested fell dead and there were no pellets in the breast when he and his wife Susan ate them.
Vicki and I are going to shoot some trap this afternoon in preparation for a quail hunt at the 74 Ranch, south of San Antonio. We look forward to these hunts every year. When we return, I’m going to cook a special breakfast for her. We will have fried quail with cream gravy, soft scrambled eggs, Kalamata olive bread toast, and champagne. If you’ve never had quail and champagne for breakfast, try it. It makes all the walking worthwhile.
Side Bar:
Tips on Shooting Geese
Years ago, before steel shot, I watched a man on the Katy-Hockley prairie kill geese consistently with a 28ga. and #6 lead shot. He picked his shots carefully and folded the birds. In amazement, I went over and asked him how he did it.
He explained to me that a goose’s head is the same size as a dove. He focused on the head of the goose and shot the head as if it were a dove. When he pulled the trigger the birds folded and came straight down – with a 28ga.! They were all shot in the head and neck. We do not recommend shooting geese or ducks with a 28ga. However, Vicki and I have used this technique of focusing on the head in coaching people to shoot ducks and geese ever since.
The reason this works so well is easy to understand. Your eyes are attracted to movement. The part of a goose that moves the most are the wing tips. The wing tips are 2/3rds of the way back into the body of the bird. Your focal point on the bird becomes your reference point for whatever lead picture you use. If your reference point is in the back of the kill zone, that is where the shot is going. If, however, your reference point is in the front part of the kill zone (the head), the perceived lead becomes more forgiving and your chances for success go way up.
Another advantage of focusing on the head of a goose is that your shot will always be on the correct line. It will take some practice to be able to hold laser-like focus on the eye of the bill of a goose, but the results are well worth the effort.
