April, 1920 
FOREST AND STREAM 
171 
HUNTING THE BLUE MOUNTAIN QUAIL 
CLIMBING AMONG THE ROCKS AND CANYONS OF SOUTHEASTERN COLO- 
RADO IN PURSUIT OF THE LITTLE TENANTS OF THE MESQUITE BRUSH 
By GUY W. VON SCHRILTZ 
O NCE upon a time I found myself with 
a day to spare in southeastern Colo- 
rado. I had with me a shotgun and 
two boxes of shells. At the ranch where 
I stopped was a saddle horse and a quarter 
of a mile west of ranch headquarters was 
the canon of the Apishpa River. This 
canon was hundreds of feet deep, and full 
of blue mountain quail. I gathered to- 
gether the available things needed and at 
nine o’clock in the morning rode down into 
the canon. It was like going down into 
another world. For hours I followed down 
the canon bottom, completely shut in from 
any sign of civilization, unless two or three 
glimpses of wild cattle trotting about a 
bend ahead could be said to bring to mind 
anything civilized, with the great canon 
walls towering above me. And I could not 
have climbed out had I wanted to. 
At nine-thirty I flushed my first flock of 
quails. I had shot blue mountain quails in 
New Mexico in 1907. I had shot them in 
southwest Texas in 1912. So I thought all 
along that I knew something about shoot- 
ing blue quails. But I soon discovered 
that I was the veriest tenderfoot at the 
business. That first covey flushed a hun- 
dred yards ahead of my horse and scat- 
tered over the canon side a quarter of a 
mile ahead. I loped as near as I could get 
on horseback, dismounted and began to hunt 
on foot. It was steep climbing over irreg- 
ular brown rocks varying in size from that 
of a hickory nut to that of a good sized 
house. Between, among and over the 
rocks grew mesquite brush and cactus. The 
first bird came from under a huge square 
rock just as I landed upon it. As I bal- 
anced myself perilously twenty-five feet 
above a wild tangled growth of brush and 
cactus, clutching with my hands and paw- 
ing with my feet, the quail sailed away 
below me to alight in a patch of tree cac- 
tus in the canon bottom. There I saw him 
streaking it across the bare spaces, getting 
away from my lo- 
cality at about the 
rate of 30 miles per 
hour. Of course I 
could not shoot. 
When I was down 
deep in the shad- 
ows between two 
great fallen boul- 
ders, picking my 
way over the rocks 
the second bird 
flew from the canon 
side above me and 
crossed directly 
over my head. I 
killed him just be- 
fore he passed be- 
hind the down hill 
boulder. I saw him 
twitch before he 
went out of sight 
so knew that he 
was hit, but it 
wasn’t until fifteen 
minutes later, when I finally found him 
a hundred feet down the side of the canon, 
feet upward on a l'ttle cleared space, that I 
knew for sure he had stopped. It is such 
shots as this that make quail shooting 
so fascinating. 
I T was a bright November day. The walls 
of the canon shut out any breeze which 
might have been blowing and about the 
time I picked up the second dead bird I 
was hot. Climbing the rocks was hard 
work. The quails scattered in all direc- 
tions when they alighted and it took a 
great deal of walking to get them out. The 
third bird went up the canon when flushed, 
almost straight up the side of the steep, 
reddish brown wall. I missed him twice as 
my feet slid on the loose rocks at each re- 
coil, but at the third shot he tumbled down 
almost into my face. The fourth quail 
went down the valley ahead of me about 
on a level with me. At that time I was 
away up next the rim rocks, two hundred 
feet above my horse. The quail fell “wab- 
bling” as I fired. I hurried as fast as I 
could over the rocks and through the brush 
to him, but long before I arrived he had 
scurried away into the rocks and I did 
not find him. Another arose from a round 
peak in the wide canon bed where I had 
seen a large flock alight. He dipped down- 
ward when shot, regained himself some- 
what, and sailed erratically a quarter of a 
mile to drop in a fifty-acre patch of tree 
cacti seven feet tall. I marked him down 
and hunted out the peak. On this peak I 
killed seven quails, which was better than 
I had been doing on the steep canon walls, 
shooting them at all angles from straight 
up, as they went back over the peak, to 
straight down as they closed their wings 
and dropped down the side of the little 
mountain. I enjoyed it very much and 
hunted the peak over and over as scattered 
quails came in from time to time from the 
canon below. When it was all over I de- 
scended into the valley to look for the 
cripple in the tree cactus. I was much sur- 
prised when I reached the canon bottom 
to find myself in a small forest of cactus. 
I lost all sense of location and only by ac- 
cident ran across the cripple on my way 
to my horse. He fluttered out from be- 
neath a cactus and I had the chase of my 
life. For ten minutes he took me through 
the cactus at a lively rate. Finally I cor- 
nered him beneath a straggly cactus tree, 
and I knocked him over. 
Shortly after leaving the peak in the 
canon valley behind I began to run short 
of shells. I grew more cautious and took 
only the better shots. But even at that the 
shells disappeared rapidly and about one 
o’clock when I rode out into a wide space 
in the canon bottom I had only six shells 
left and two of them were loaded with 
BB shot. 
The next bunch of quails exhausted my 
shells, excepting the BBs. It was several 
miles down to the canon outlet. I rode 
and rode and rode. It seemed much far- 
ther than it was. Quails arose ahead of 
me continually. I 
counted the flocks 
and I believe it was 
nineteen flocks that 
I saw after I ran 
out of shells. 
Half an hour be- 
fore sundown I 
climbed out of the 
canon to find my- 
self still six miles 
from home. On the 
way I passed six 
antelope. One had 
a nice set of horns. 
They watched me 
ride by without se- 
rious alarm, prob- 
ably three hundred 
yards a w a y. But 
the antelope season 
was closed and I 
could only look, 
and wish for light 
enough for a picture. 
The home of the Blue Mountain Quail 
