Here, Birdie Birdie Birdie Birdie... (Quail HUNTING, not Shooting)

I slept in just a little bit this morning…. Err yeah. But oh well, nobody seemed to mind incredibly. I was a little fuzzy-minded upon waking up, but hey, what else is new? A mug of hot chocolate cured that… After I had gotten dressed Daddy announced he was going quail hunting. He and Tyler had gone a few times a couple weeks previous and returned victorious with about 12 birds each time. Well Tyler didn’t want to go this time so I volunteered to fill his position. Grabbed my Beretta 12 gauge (we have four 12 gauge shotguns and one 20 gauge pump that I used to shoot… I love that thing! Too bad I outgrew it, I really really liked it) that is really Daddy’s but he never uses it. Anyway, grab my shooting vest and coat and off we go on a grand adventure! I should probably mention here that Daddy told Momma we would be back in about half an hour with dinner.

We weren’t home until 1:30. We left at 10:30. You do the math…

But it was fun! We found 5 coveys of quail. For those of ya’ll out there who have never really gone quail hunting… Well I’ll fill you in. There are different species of quail. If you watch fellas hunting quail on TV, those are most likely Bob Whites. Bob Whites are a heck of a lot easier to shoot then Scaled Quail, also known as Blue Quail.

Actually, when you are hunting Scaled/Blue Quail, it’s not even shooting. It’s hunting. There is a difference.

For instance. You’re gonna go shoot a deer. Some people bait the deer, which means putting out feed like corn and waiting for them to come, and then shoot them. Which is not sporting at all, its boring, and I think stupid and just plain wrong. That is called “deer shooting”. You hunt nothing. When you actually go out and search for the deer, and have to hike through the sand or rocks or brush or whatever, and go looking for the deer, that is “deer hunting”. You have to hunt the deer.

Same with Blue Quail. They aren’t just there and they don’t just fly up right in front of you for your convenience and they don’t sit there nice and pretty and wait for you. It’s not quail shooting… It’s quail hunting. These little fellas love to run. And you usually find them nested around water (dirt tanks, ponds, stock tanks) where the brush is thick. You have to look on the ground for them because you will see them running, then you have to run and catch up to them, ‘flush’ the covey, and when they go up, you gotta shoot em. Which is a lot easier said than done. Because you’ve been running, you’re breathing hard, in our case during quail season it’s cold and when you’re breathing hard in the cold, well, if you’ve ever done that you know what I mean. So then it’s sometimes hard to get your gun on the stupid birds and they don’t stay in the air for very long and GRRR.

Dumb birds.

But neither of us did good. We didn’t get any very good shots, which stinks. Daddy got 4 quail though and I got… 7!! Woohoo! Yep! They aren’t the same species as Dad’s, he got the Blue Quail. Mine are called Imaginary Quail, or sometimes Crazy-Person Quail. Because only us nutty people see them. And they only exist in the imagination.

*sigh*

But in my defense (!!), I haven’t shot a gun in months! Months! So HA!

Anyway, the four quail made a good dinner. Mom grilled some sausage on the grill, we had pork and beans (which is really just the beans... with little diced pork in it... not much pork... mostly beans), baked potatoes, and then Daddy ‘filleted’ the quail, so there were 8 pieces instead of four, and topped it with peppered bacon, and put that on the George Foreman grill. It was very very very good. Mmmmm… It tasted delicious! Of course maybe it tasted so excellent because it was 2:00 by the time I had dinner. But, I’m pretty sure it would have tasted every bit of good had it been noon.

So yeah. Quail season ends in a few months. So I have plenty of time to get my practice in.

Even if it means shooting 200 holes in the air before I get one quail.

But I’m telling you right now, when I get that dadgummed quail, it had better taste gooooood.