740 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Nov. 18, 1911. 
Quail Shooting in Planted Covers 
By AMOS BURHANS 
I f HAT’S the sense of keeping that raft 
W of setters, Doc?” I asked as I entered 
his well kept back yard, where, with 
his coachman, he was looking over some husky 
youngsters that would get a bit of the field in 
a few days. 
“Most folks think I have no sense at all, so 
I might as well not disappoint them.” 
For years he and I had been shooting com¬ 
panions. We had marked the decline of quail 
shooting in our neighborhood along with the 
increased population, increasing taxes and con¬ 
stantly lessening amount of natural cover the 
birds seemed to demand to protect themselves 
from the onslaughts of the growing army of 
hunters. Three years before we had formed a 
county protective society for the prevention of 
final slaughter of the few birds we then had. 
We had demanded the membership of every 
man who owned a gun and had practically re¬ 
ceived the annual dues of five dollars from each 
of the hunters who joined with us to bring up 
the quail status and cut down the illegal and 
unwarranted shooting, prevent small boys from 
carrying arms without permits and a lot of 
other things that woke up the county to the 
value of its game as represented in the quail crop. 
The county commissioners had ordered a 
three-year closed season. We had planted 
sparsely inhabited covers with the hardiest of 
Northern quail that we could get and paid out 
good money to have the birds cared for during 
the severest weather. Further, we had trapped 
a great many birds during the fall and winter 
and carried them over till mating time and then 
released pairs and more pairs in the best 
covers. One great piece of rough timberland 
and brush that could not be tilled, and which 
ran down into bottoms along the river, where 
cockleburs and swale grass, weeds and sun¬ 
flowers, rushes and brambles held sway, we had 
leased and fenced stock tight and sold the 
pasturage to pay enough revenue to hire a man 
to look after the birds, winter and summer. 
The best part of the campaign we had waged 
was that we had from the first the moral support 
of every man who knew a quail from a jack- 
rabbit. They were all with the movement. 
Well, it was the first open season of ten days 
in which any man could shoot as many as he 
thought he was entitled to. The hunters were 
all on their mettle to protect the birds, to en¬ 
joy some shooting and have enough for a still 
greater crop the coming year. Doc and I were 
going out to give a few of the pups a bit of 
work, as they were yard broken nicely, and he 
would rather see a setter work down a cover 
that contained birds than to pull a patient 
through the crisis of the fever; at least. I had 
accused him of this. The raft of dogs he kept 
were his pride and delight. They were his 
means of relaxation and fun. And my banter, 
with which I opened this article, was but the 
ten-thousandth that I had made to him. 
“The season is right on us in a couple of 
days,” he said. “I suppose we might as well 
go out to McDavit’s bramble patch. It's the 
furthest from town, and we will have room to 
handle the pups, eh?” Knowing I approved 
everything he did, he never looked up from 
brushing out the flag of a nice Whitestone 
puppy. 
McDavit's was the leased pasturage along the 
bottoms and the high bluffs. By the time we 
arrived we had heard the cracking of smoke¬ 
less off to the left a mile or more in the rich 
cornfields owned by some of the club members. 
After stabling the horses, each led a puppy out 
for his first work. Each one had been ac¬ 
quainted with the smell and chasing of a quail 
by scent before, as the Doctor’s coachman had 
a few cripples that he used for that purpose. 
They had come to their pointing instincts easily 
and naturally, and all that remained for them 
was to learn how to approach birds, where to 
look for them and to have their manners 
polished up. Of course, this was a great deal, 
but at that it was not as much as most puppies 
have to spend a couple of years in attaining. 
Back of a scraggly patch of squaw corn we 
struck the first birds. They were little fellows 
of the second or third covey. When they got 
up in front of the puppies they cried as they 
shot into the air, each one making for safety 
without a thought of where he was going to 
get it. They scattered wildly. Jeff, the elder 
of the pups, dropped in his tracks when the 
dozen birds rose with a whirr. To say the 
least, he was surprised. He looked it. He has 
stood the quail in the home garden for ten 
minutes at a time, never moving a hair, and 
here were other birds that looked and smelled 
like those at home, which he had blundered on 
to and never even been warned of by his choke- 
bored nose. The little rascals had laid close to 
the earth when they heard the puppies approach¬ 
ing, and we had to literally kick them out. 
John, the other pup, ran up to the spot where 
the covey ha 3 been sitting on the dusty mound 
in the clump of scrub willows, dropped his head to 
the earth, lowered himself on his long legs, began 
wagging his tail from root to tip and acted as 
though he knew what had been going on in this 
little corner. He forged ahead a bit into the 
open, where there was some second growth 
wild hay, fell on his belly and rolled his eyes 
back at us. We both thought he had a straggler 
and went to see if it were true. 
Whirr! A pair of half-grown wings beat the 
air. I pulled the gun from my shoulder when I 
saw the tiny bird, and looked over at Doc. 
Doc took down his gun and looked at me. 
Both pups lay on their bellies and looked at us. 
“Why didn't you shoot?” Doc asked me. 
“Why didn’t you?” 
“For the same reason you didn’t,” he 
answered. “I was ashamed to bother the little 
rascal.” 
“Well, he will make a part of a pair late next 
spring, and if the early nesting is too wet, just 
such as he will pay for his life.” 
That remark was just like Doc. He always 
looked at things right end to. So we trudged 
over to a piece of burr patch and weed beds, 
the like of which few quail ever have a chance 
to hide under. The little birds of the first covey 
could not be forced to leave their hiding places, 
and the dogs were too inexperienced to locate 
them, but both pups were beginning to get out 
and range a bit, and we next sent them into the 
weed patch that sloped to the south. 
Here our luck was better, as we forced a 
dozen good-sized birds out and the pups pointed 
of their own accord, three times, a bird ahead 
of them each time. Doc made a couple of nice 
shots, taking his time and trying to pot the 
largest birds of the covey. I hit one clean, 
missed the other one and stumbled when I 
brought gun to shoulder for a single in the 
open that I should have bagged easily. The 
puppy that had shown some signs of gun-shy¬ 
ness acted well. The fusilade made him take 
notice of it and rather lowered his conquering 
air for the space of a minute, but after this he 
was off looking for more birds, head down to 
get the full use of his proboscis, and tail rattling 
the weeds merrily. 
Noon found us with seven birds in all, though 
the pups had made a good dozen stands each 
on birds and had shown a disposition to back 
each other. We were not out for records; 
getting the pups on the birds was the thing. 
They had scented birds and held their points 
without a severe bit of chastisement. 
The two left in the crates during the morning 
were taken out during the afternoon. Eager to 
be off, they dashed into a covey, one dog tail¬ 
ing the other, before we were within two gun¬ 
shots of the birds. Spot dropped his nose to 
ground and Jerry followed suit. Tails began to 
wag, and they went to work to find more scent 
of the same kind. One had to have a cord at¬ 
tached to him to repress a bit of his energy. 
The other required a bit of clouting when he 
holed a rabbit, but all told, they got a good 
start and showed that their breeding was right 
and yard breaking perfect. We found birds 
small enough that their mother had not weaned 
them. Others were so large that they could 
hardly be told from old birds. On every hand 
they had done well in breeding from the plant¬ 
ings we had made the past three seasons and 
were as abundant as we had ever seen them. 
The day’s end saw fourteen birds in the bag. 
There were probably 200 birds left for other 
shooters and seed. Predictions that planted 
birds and those that had been fed during the 
bad winter weather would be slow flyers and 
tame, had been proved false. They were hardy; 
they disappeared quickly; they held cover close 
and lay well to the dogs. Though they had not 
had the range of wheat stubble and lacked sum¬ 
mer feeding of grains, they were fat, well boned 
and had shown themselves to subsist on the 
many different weed seeds and bugs as easily 
as the birds that had been fed out of hand. Our 
feeding had stopped as soon as vegetation had 
come in the spring. It had not been cut off 
at once, but had been diminished easily until the 
birds had found they could rely on themselves. 
' Our day had been a success. It had been full 
of pleasant observations and opportunities to 
give the puppies a good start in training. We 
voted our three closed seasons a blessing, 
planned to extend the operations of the society 
and encourage protection even more staunchly, 
in order that we, as well as others who had 
the best interests of the quail at heart, might 
have many fine days of shooting in planted 
covers. 
