My wing-shooting skills were a little rusty, but after missing the first couple of flushed singles, I folded two singles in a row with picture perfect shots.
They say “pride comes before a fall,” and I admit, I was feeling a little self-assured as I watched the dogs work through a nearby patch of buffalo grass. Both pointers locked up as I heard Alex Gray say, “Easy, Layla … easy, girl.”
Seeing Alex’s hand signal to step forward, I moved in just behind Bo, who held point like a furry white granite statue. Three feet in front of the dog, I saw a tiny flicker of movement in the straw brown cover. Straining my eyes to pick out the silhouette of the camouflaged bird, I made the mistake of concentrating and looking down when I should have been ready to look up.

In all my upland hunting, I had either hunted with pointers or flush dogs. This was my first experience with a combination of the two. Bo and Jessie would lock up on point on the birds and Layla would flush on command.

“Get ready, Jack. Dave, move up just a little … Now Layla … Get ‘em up.”

The quivering little English Cocker made an excited stiff-legged jump ahead of the pointers and a full covey blasted from the cover. I shouldered the gun at the roar of wings as the birds streamed into the sky.

A dozen birds were up as I tried to pick one to follow. Mentally, I reminded myself, Don’t try to kill the entire covey … pick one bird. I settled on a brown blur rocketing toward a scattered grove of long-needle pine trees.

My Beretta’s modified choke gave a longer reach to the shot pattern, and I was just squeezing the trigger as Dave’s over and under dropped the first bird from the flush. Dave’s second shot put down his second bird, as my first shot came up a clean miss.

Pulling the trigger in a “Hail Mary” as the bird was almost out of range, I heard our guide, Alex, say, “I think you got just a little bit of him, Mr. Spaulding. You nicked him and it landed in a pine tree a ways over there. I can see the bird now.”

Not one to waste a bird, I began to walk with Alex and Dave in the general direction of the grove of trees. Granted, my eyesight isn’t what it used to be, but I wasn’t about to ask Alex which tree.

Graciously, Alex pointed out the tree and said, “See him? He’s about four feet out on the second limb, on the left hand side of the tree.”

At first, all I saw were pinecones dangling in the general vicinity where Alex indicated the quail had landed. Scanning the limb carefully, I saw two pinecones hanging from the limb and what appeared to be a third cone sticking up and standing on the limb. “I see him.”

I heard Dave say, “You’re pretty close, don’t blow him up.”

Holding my aim a few inches over the bird’s head, I intended for the shot pattern to miss the bulk of the body and not ruin the bird. BOOM!

The quail just sat there as I heard Alex’s voice straining to keep from laughing. “I believe you might have missed him, Mr. Spaulding.”

Holding a little tighter on what was now my fourth shot at the bird, I squeezed the trigger.  The dead bird had barely touched the ground before Layla snatched it up and took it directly to Alex. The shells I shot weighed more than the bird.

Shoving a couple more rounds in the gun, I looked up to see Dave grinning as he said, “You got enough shells?”

I was walking in quail heaven.

My good friend Dave Stephens had called and asked if I would like to join him for a couple of days’ quail hunting on the Rio Piedra Plantation at Camilla, Ga. Let’s see: luxurious plantation-style quail hunting in the glorious warmth of the South in a four-star lodge surrounded by more than 6,000 acres of prime quail habitat, and exposed to gracious Southern hospitality with gourmet food and drink?

Needless to say, it didn’t take me long to clear my schedule.

I told Dave, “Rio Piedra’s been on my ‘bucket list’ … I’ve heard its quail heaven. I can’t wait!”

They say perfection is in the attention to details. Tending to the details makes all of the difference in the quality of a hunt. And, Rio Piedra is about the details. One inescapable detail is habitat, and the habitat is the key to the quail hunting at Rio Piedra. The slightly rolling savannah fields of scattered pines and native grasses are interspersed with strips of food plots. Needless to say, I was impressed with what I saw.

Our guide, and professional quail hunter, Alex Gray, brought me up to speed on the details of the managed lands: “We spend a lot of the off-season tending to the land. Keeping our fields in top shape takes a lot of work and planning. Our cover is second to none, and each year, we pick select areas and burn.
“In the past, we have selectively cut a small amount of timber, but we plant a lot more trees than we cut. Our owners take a great deal of pride in Rio Piedra, and they want it to be the best.”

The savannah land of 6,000 acres of Rio Piedra’s property is constantly fortified with dark barn, farm-raised quail. However, once acclimated over a period of several days, the birds are as wild as the many native coveys to be found on the property.

I asked Alex if he could tell the difference. He replied, “They are all hard to hit on a rise.”

In the course of two days’ hunting, I saw more quail than I have seen in the past 25 years back in the Midwest. Bobwhite quail are under increasing stress back in Indiana, and their numbers are plummeting because of loss of habitat and a proliferation of predators.