My Health is Better in November by Havilah Babcock

Author:Havilah Babcock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2016-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

SOMETIMES YOU CAN’T FIND THEM

I HAVE read—and written—articles on how to shoot quail, but what I want to know is how to find them. For you and I have learned, oft-times to our chagrin, that birds can be very plentiful and yet unfindable. Two men may hunt precisely the same territory under identical weather conditions. One finds birds aplenty, the other finds precious few. Now I want to know why. Is there a sort of technique to locating birds, a technique based on an intimate acquaintance with their haunts and habits?

I had much rather read than write about this subject, but apparently few writers have had the rashness to tackle it. What I don’t know about it would fill a book. On the other hand, what I do know often takes the sag out of my bag and adds immeasurably to the pleasure of the hunt.

With the hope of starting a friendly feud with other hunters who are more competent to testify, I venture to set down a few things I’ve picked up, often at the cost of embarrassment or long and bootless tramps afield, during the twenty-five years I have been cultivating the acquaintance of Bob White.

Are there a few rules that might be followed with reasonable prospect of success? Well, yes. But I am not guaranteeing that Bob and his bevy will always conform to the rules. There are non-conformists, precedent-breakers, and plain damn fools among birds as among us who hunt them.

To find birds you’ve got to go where they are. Not where they ought to be. Not where you’d like them to be. Not where they would be easy to shoot. You’ve got to go where they are at that particular time of the day, that particular stage of the season, and during that particular kind of weather. You’ve got to know your quarry as a ward-heeler knows his constituency.

There are times when a wise man refraineth from hunting, when he stayeth at home and regaleth his spouse. For instance, it is useless to start hunting early on a cold, brittle, and heavily-frosted morning. Birds are loth to leave the roost, and who can blame them? They may be caught in bed as late as ten o'clock on such mornings. And they seem to emit little scent when huddled together in such a compact and inert mass.

Dogs may overrun them entirely, or get too close before detecting their presence. So if the morning is of the aforementioned sort,—benumbingly cold and heavily-frosted,—you may be in the bed an hour or two longer with impunity. Or you may doze about the kitchen stove and give your pancreatic juices a chance to act on your breakfast, with the assurance of forfeiting little thereby.

All you’ve missed is a fruitless tramp and a sniffy head cold. And a pair of half-frozen ears so sensitive that when a recalcitrant branch snaps back and clips one, well, I’ve seen it fetch tears to the eyes of manly and upstanding citizens. Be as sensible as the birds you’re hunting and stay in bed.

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