Hunting Quail and Rabbits Growing Up Wild In Georgia

Way back when I was a kid there were almost no deer in Georgia.  Our hunting was for small game like squirrels and rabbits and doves and quail.  My dad didn’t like fishing but he loved shooting doves and following out pointers looking for quail.

    There were a good many old farms near our house and the few planted fields and old abandoned ones had thick hedgerows and fence lines grown up with plumb bushes and briars. They were ideal for quail and our two dogs were good at finding coveys of quail living there.

    One Christmas my best present was a set of Duckback hunting clothes.  The thick jacket and pants allowed me to wade through briar patches without getting scratched.  And hunting quail consisted of a lot of wading through briars!

    My proudest day quail hunting was by myself. 
I was in high school and one afternoon after school
I wanted to go quail hunting but daddy could not go.
He let me go get the dogs and take them out by myself for the first time.

    Even better he let me take his 12-gauge bird gun, a short barrel semiautomatic hump-back Remington loaded with #9 shot. That gun no longer hunts quail, it sits by my bed loaded with #1 buckshot.  It is an ideal home protection device.

    The afternoon I went out alone I managed to find five coveys of quail, a very good day, especially since I only hunted about three hours.  I killed one bird from each covey on the flush. Although I tried to find singles from the scattered covey I just did not have the skill, even with the dogs.

    Daddy seemed real surprised but proud when I got home with the birds. We had them for dinner then next night.

    Quail season opened yesterday, as did rabbit season. But the old farms are gone and modern farms do not have hedgerows and good quail cover.  And coyotes, foxes and fire ants have taken their toll on Georgia’s state game bird. Hunting them is extremely difficult now, even if you have a lot of land and try to manage it for quail.

    Nowadays about the only quail hunting here is on plantations where you pay to go out with a guide and dogs to find planted birds.  I won a hunt on one of them a few years ago and was extremely disappointed. 
I took daddy’s old gun, again loaded with #9 shot, and killed my 12-bird limit quickly.  I did not miss a single shot, amazing since I had not shot at them in more than 30 years.

    The pen raised birds were put out in pairs and the guide knew where they were. It was fun watching the dogs work, but the quail were slow when they flushed, so slow one of the dogs managed to grab one as it took off, snatching it from the air. That would not happen with wild birds.  I was so disappointed I have no desire to do that again.