doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com What a Great Year for Gunning in West Texas

I continue to count my blessings with each outing........Record Quail numbers, The late Dove season kicks in on Saturday this week, and we finally have some Ducks on the place following the year's first cold snaps......

Trying my best to consume it all , probably won't see this combination of birds , habitat and climate again in my life....

Bird numbers have me playing with more guns than normal for me.....Chance to use different ones on lots of shooting opportunities lets one form pretty conclusive opinions on personal preferences.....

With all that , I find not much has changed relative to guns and loads, but I tend to find myself with relatively lighter guns for Quail than in past seasons...Shooting percentages are holding up surprisingly well thru these changes....

I'll get some pics hopefully, but shooting alone mainly ,I put more emphasis on dog work/training than photography...

Are you hunting Sandhill Crane in your parts? We were on property near Big Spring for a number of years, and often the Crane hunting was quite good. I too am often hunting alone, but have gotten in the habit of taking the camera/phone into the field, as I much prefer photos afield as opposed the typical tailgate shot back at camp. Mike

So glad to.read of your continued success with birds this year. I can tell that you realize what a blessing it is to have those numbers twice straight. I really enjoy your posts and pics, and look forward to seeing more great scenes on the ranch. Hopefully I can get out to hunt somewhere in Texas one season and experience it for myself, even if it isn't a banner year when I make it.

SRH

Mel5141:
My wife and I are recently retired - at least partially for me. We are looking at places a little warmer than Wisconsin for the winter months and really do not care for Florida. Can you give me some suggestions in West Texas for nicer places to stay for 4-8 weeks at a time. It would really be nice to hunt and shoot clays in temperatures about 15oF with less than 2 feet of snow. I just passed on a late season grouse hunt here because we are suppose to have wind chills at -20oF. That's tough on the fingers, toes and dog.

From yesterday:



Dogs on the ground for six and one half hours. Twelve coveys. Lots of single points. Just me and the dogs.

I'm with you Mel. Very grateful for the birds these seasons.

� symbols can be done on computers or iPhones if you are under the age of 12.:)

On a iPhone tap then hold 0. Then slide finger up and towards the left to display a � symbol.

On computers it varies by operating system. Hold down Alt and type 248 then release Alt key. To place F immediately after � symbol just use shift F like you are capitalizing normally. Macs are different which is no great surprise. Use to be shift option 8. Now you can do it with emoji symbol function. But as a man I try not to get in touch with my emoji side of my self.

These are from my shooting student Cy. I have also mentored him on bird dog training, quail hunting, and field trialing. Cy has been an apt student as you can see.





Cy took these birds on his West Texas birdlease this season. I will send him a link to this thread.

Nice work with the Fox Mike......
Looks like those poor pups with no, or abbreviated, tails got you in the right place at the right time.......
I have talked to a lot of Bird hunters State wide and I understand we have the BEST of it here on the Southern Rolling Plains......A fairly well known Quail Biologist/Researcher in my neighborhood reports Record numbers of Covey contacts on a lease near Big Spring, 60+ in one day for his party a couple of weeks ago.

Yesterday was indeed a great afternoon. I had checked the weather and decided to try to get the Girls out for a run.
Year end business kept me in town much later than I had hoped. But I was determined to get them out, so in spite of my late start (I opened the door to the dog rig at 4:08 pm)and was in birds immediately. 4 dogs down at once is organized chaos with these bird numbers, but I wanted all to get some action.

One covey find ran into another and never slacked up. Shooting and dead bird pick up was punctuated with additional points for a solid hour plus....Keeping the dog rig caught up with the action was my biggest challenge.....Counting coveys was impossible as one ran into multiple others.
I twice had two dogs in sight pointed on separate coveys simultaneously 100-200 yards apart.....

I pocketed the 15th bird of a limit at 5:16 pm.... 68 minutes...... Too fast to totally digest it all.....

Nature will return us to normal all too quickly......But I'm going to relish it while I can....

I'm glad the birds are thick down there Paul! Sounds like my idea of heaven. Thanks for the reports and please keep 'em coming.



Best,

Mike

Tom--The problem with hunting in TX is that most private ground is leased. Often by deer hunters; sometimes by deer hunters who don't bird hunt, so the bird hunting can be "subleased" from them or you can still lease from the owner directly. Often done by a group of bird hunters. If you find one of those deer leases where they don't hunt birds, that works out pretty well for winter quail hunting. Deer season closes at the end of the year (or used to), which still leaves several weeks to hunt quail--that likely haven't been hunted up to that point. But if you're looking for places to hunt quail on public land, OK/NM/AZ are all better bets. Although especially in NM and AZ, the quail numbers likely won't be what you'd find in TX in a year like this one. I hunted the OK Panhandle last year, and quail numbers were very good. I think more public land opportunities there than TX.