South Tx quail trip - Updated w/pics

[GoTres]

Tired, but I can't sleep anymore. I'm heading to Austin this morning to pick up my brother and we're heading to south TX for some quail hunting and I've got a bad case of the pre-trip jitters.

Belle watched me pack until about 11:00 and she won't shut up. Always seems to know when we're going but I admire her enthusiasm and I'm a little jealous of her energy.

The place we're going is about 45 miles north of Mexico - about 6 hours from here. Supposed to be an excellent year for birds down there so we're going to go try to kick up a few.
Earlier in the week, it looked like it as going to be really cold down there but now I think we're talking about high's in the mid 60's and lows in the 30's.

Update on Monday.

[96fisherman]

good luck buddy!

[deerslayer11]

Bust em.

[GoTres]

The trip was cool. Turned out to be about 6-1/2 hours of driving but we got into some birds, so it was worth it.

Ended up with 20 birds between us in 1-1/2 days. There were lots of people complaining that they never saw birds but we were in them from 20 minutes after sunrise on Saturday morning and kept after them until about 1:00. Saturday afternoon was a bust and we added a few yesterday. We could've shot better but I saw more birds down there than there are anywhere around here.

Hog sign everywhere & that place must be thick with coyotes too but we never saw either. I did find a javelina skull and pulled the cutters out of it. Serious teeth.

Took just a few pics and I'll try to get some up for y'all tonighte or tomorrow.

[Shorthair]

I guess the puppy is turning into a bonified bird dog then, huh?
It sounds like a good trip.

[GoTres]

Here's me & the little pup, smiling from ear to ear. She could've done more pointing but she did pretty well with her retieving. I've got about 25 dried wings now, so we've got some field work planned for the off season.



Belle in action in front of my brother. She ran all weekend and we'd kick birds up behind her.



I had some more pics, but I can't get them sized down to upload to the picture hosting site without cutting the good stuff out. I'll try to resize them again and see if I can't get a few more of them on.

This place was cool, it's 15,000 acres all high-fenced (perimeter and cross fencing) and game managed. You can get an idea of the cover from the pics. The high fencing is so they can keep up with the larger game but they aged our quail and checked their crops everytime we would leave the WMA. All of our birds turned out to be juvenile "complete". Met a couple of guys from GA. The vehicle said Jackson County. One of them was a real hoot. Tough life...they'd been quail hunting in TX since Jan 2nd.