308win
Member
We had a lot of traditions when I was growing up and one was the Thanksgiving morning quail hunt. We would usually start from grandpas around 10AM (quail aren’t early risers either). We had about a four or so square mile area that we could hunt. In those friendlier days neighbors had an informal agreement that it was ok to hunt if you respected the other man’s property.
Then it was mostly corn fields, pasture, hay fields, and scrub land that didn’t lay quite right or for some other reason wasn’t worth working. A lot of the scrub land was in redtop and prairie grasses, young pin oaks, sassafras, briars of various persuasions, cedars, and a wild variety of other trees, shrubs and ‘weeds’. Perfect quail and rabbit habitat – (and no, to the chagrin of you purists reading this, we weren’t above taking a rabbit while bird hunting if he gave us the chance).
We didn’t have a dog in the later years as neither my dad nor uncles had the inclination to invest the time and energy and commitment that a good hunting dog deserves. We really didn’t need one as we were on a first name basis with the coveys and would usually find them within a couple of hundred yards of where we expected them to be.
We didn’t have a lot of competition either as most of grandpas neighbors were like him and didn’t hunt birds. We also pretty much knew who and who didn’t have permission from whom to hunt and we and the neighbors had a zero tolerance policy for trespassers (too many broken fences; shot cows, sheep and pigs; and ‘dusted houses’ to tolerate trespassers).
We would hunt for about four hours and then head back to the house for Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t know how she did it but grandma would be setting the baking hen or ham on the table just about the time we hit the porch steps – “It’s about time you boys got in here, David go get a bucket of coal†– I guess that we were as predictable as the birds and I knew that that coal bucket had better be full of big lumps and none of that little stuff. After dinner, I would clean the birds and rabbits while my grandpa and my uncles talked about how there wasn’t any game anymore, the price of corn, and how they wished winter was over.
Robert Ruark wrote in one of his Old Man and the Boy short stories that people are like bob whites (and I’m paraphrasing from memory) – they will walk away but they always fly home.
I wish I was flying home today! - Happy Thanksgiving.
Then it was mostly corn fields, pasture, hay fields, and scrub land that didn’t lay quite right or for some other reason wasn’t worth working. A lot of the scrub land was in redtop and prairie grasses, young pin oaks, sassafras, briars of various persuasions, cedars, and a wild variety of other trees, shrubs and ‘weeds’. Perfect quail and rabbit habitat – (and no, to the chagrin of you purists reading this, we weren’t above taking a rabbit while bird hunting if he gave us the chance).
We didn’t have a dog in the later years as neither my dad nor uncles had the inclination to invest the time and energy and commitment that a good hunting dog deserves. We really didn’t need one as we were on a first name basis with the coveys and would usually find them within a couple of hundred yards of where we expected them to be.
We didn’t have a lot of competition either as most of grandpas neighbors were like him and didn’t hunt birds. We also pretty much knew who and who didn’t have permission from whom to hunt and we and the neighbors had a zero tolerance policy for trespassers (too many broken fences; shot cows, sheep and pigs; and ‘dusted houses’ to tolerate trespassers).
We would hunt for about four hours and then head back to the house for Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t know how she did it but grandma would be setting the baking hen or ham on the table just about the time we hit the porch steps – “It’s about time you boys got in here, David go get a bucket of coal†– I guess that we were as predictable as the birds and I knew that that coal bucket had better be full of big lumps and none of that little stuff. After dinner, I would clean the birds and rabbits while my grandpa and my uncles talked about how there wasn’t any game anymore, the price of corn, and how they wished winter was over.
Robert Ruark wrote in one of his Old Man and the Boy short stories that people are like bob whites (and I’m paraphrasing from memory) – they will walk away but they always fly home.
I wish I was flying home today! - Happy Thanksgiving.
