Self Guided Bobwhite Quail Hunts
Self guided Bobwhite Quail hunts with Mid-America Hunting Association are for wild quail on private land in Iowa, Missouri and Kansas for the quail hunter that has his own dogs. Each quail hunter may step from his truck on different land each time, each day and every day of his hunt. Quail hunts are on active grain farms over miles of edge cover.
Self Guided Quail Hunt
Throughout this web site are many in-the-field pictures and while a quick glance will show dogs on point with hunters, the value of the pictures is the background habitat. Calibrating one's eye for where to hunt is important as the best quail hunting is within the heavily farmed country of Kansas, Missouri and Iowa. On any give 1,000 acres of this farm land region at best 50% is wildlife habitat and the remainder is crop field. That 50% wildlife area does not mean it is all quail habitat. Often the best quail hunting is drawn down to a specific 40 acres of any given 1/4 or 1/2 section. Knowing the telling signs of that golden nugget 40 acres makes for more quail action in shorter time.
The background to this picture was a long road for this youth hunter to bag his first wild Bobwhite Quail. Both father and son went at it hard on their first self guided wild Bobwhite Quail hunt traveling from a state without quail. We hope this picture does last them a lifetime. And, it should have an effect o the reader that this organization finds a youth with a single quail worthy of note unlike many other quail hunting web sites that boast piles of dead birds before their road sign.
Once a long time ago we assumed the self guided quail hunter was like us, but found we were often mistaken. We thought all seek to make his own upland bird hunts. Over the years we found that to be wrong. We since developed this definition of Mid-America Hunting Association and our self guided Bobwhite Quail hunts as a means to insure there are not any surprises later.
Our Bobwhite Quail hunts require a willingness to walk as all of our land access is by foot. No horses, gators or any other method other than foot is permissible. The associated point is that our acreage is large and will require much walking to cover it as not all of it will hold birds and the spots that do must be found.
The next requirement is the ability to shoot. This point while seemingly obvious became an issue with complaints our wild birds have been hunted hard. Frequently when we dug into this compliant we found the hunter's background to have been preserve or plantation hunts presumably on pen raised birds. Wild quail will always be harder to hunt and shoot. They will hold tight as a covey and singles, run further when running as a covey or single and will fly faster. In short anything a pen raised bird can do a wild bird can do better, faster and longer. Plantation hunters interpret these hard to hunt birds as being pressured rather than the wild version of their past experience.
Another aspect found when digging into this issue of our birds being a hard hunt is that while plenty of birds have been found (seen) few are pointed. We then conclude dog power is probably a causative factor, or at least contributory. But, before we move onto dog power we return to the shooting that will occur.
What was truly identified in this shooting requirement is that wild bobwhites are ground loving and once flushed fly just to clear brush and return to cover (ground) as soon as they can. The time to acquire and engage a single whorl of a bobwhite frequently with distracting intervening brush and trees makes for some very tough shooting conditions. That hunter experience is similar to dog work.
Dog power is a topic far too large for this discussion and we invite all to read a discussion developed over the years in an article titled Dog Power. The short answer is that not all dogs have the wherewithal to be good bobwhite dogs in spite of any hunter's desire. This leads us to the point about our quail hunts and that is what are the reasonable expectations of the hunt.
Mid-America Hunting Association self guided hunt reasonable expectations begin with we will get the hunter to the right habitat in the right region of Kansas, Missouri and Iowa that has a history of good bobwhite production. Each hunter will have more land to hunt each day than time. All will enjoy being able to step from the truck onto a different field each time of every day all season long without having to cross their tracks unless they want to. No one will find the public land hunter mentality of having to beat the other guy to the next covey or the more damaging attitude of having to bag each bird flushed or pointed.
Those quail hunters with the better dog power, typically a brace, will find four coveys in a day on average and with singles action capable of allowing one shot to bag for each dog on each covey making the eight quail daily limit. The hunters with the best dogs will accomplish this in 1/2 to 3/4's of a day.
What are not reasonable expectations is to find a covey every time stepping from the truck or bagging a limit every day.
Long after we wrote the article above we found need to better express that self guided pay to hunt quail hunters are far different than free land hunters. That difference is the self guided hunter of his own dogs that pays to hunt understands the value of covey conservation in terms of taking for bag one to two birds per covey and that covey may be hunted for seasons to come. A free land hunter will not stop at one quail. He will seek to hunt each covey to extinction or until the singles cannot be found any further for that day. The free land hunter knows that if he does not harvest as many as he can and as soon as he can the next free land hunter will, so why not.
John,
In the attached photo, you will see 9 quail that I got with one shot. The weather was so bad the only thing that I was shooting was my camera. With three inches of snow on the ground and freezing rain, I did not think it appropriate to push the birds. Hopefully, this current round of freezing rain will not hurt them and the weather will clear off.
Take care, Mike
