Midland is Bush-Quail country

Midland is Bush-Quail country
West Texas county big enough to embrace conservative politics and liberal coveys
09:32 PM CST on Saturday, November 18, 2006

MIDLAND – In neo-political terms, Midland is one of this red state's reddest voting blocks. Driving through west Texas on I-20, Midland's incongruous skyline rises abruptly from the Permian Basin's otherwise featureless plains. Jackrabbits are the only jacks that outnumber pump jacks in these parts.
A sign on the outskirts of the city proclaims it the home town of George W. and Laura Bush. President Bush swept 81 percent of the local vote in 2004. The politics may be red, but the quail are blue.
Bluer than Massachusetts, bluer than the seemingly endless west Texas sky, bluer than late-night jokes from stand-up comedians.
Roy Wilson tried to tell me last year that Midland was the Lone Star capital for blue quail, but I ignored it as political rhetoric from a hunting outfitter. Wilson owns Texas Best Outfitters, which operates across west Texas and the Rolling Plains. Besides, blue quail are the most irritating of upland game birds. They rank just behind James Cargill, Rush Limbaugh and fingernails on chalk boards.
Blues, also called scaled quail because of their serpent-like feather patterns, are the least gentlemanly branch of the quail family. They'd rather run from danger than hide. Blues leave pointing dogs a bundle of quivering frustration and they aggravate hunters to the point of losing all dignity, sometimes to the brink of ground-sluicing bunched-up birds with an autoloading 12 gauge.
I've hunted blues from the Canadian River of the Texas Panhandle to the Rio Grande of the south Texas plains. I thought I knew something about the birds.
Like politics, the blues brothers made a fool of me again. I learned something new from a kid who's barely old enough to vote.
I was riding shotgun as David Harrison, 18, piloted his Yamaha Rhino ATV through the cactus, mesquite and greasewood flats of Midland County. His tires, filled with industrial strength sealant, soon bristled with so many thorns they looked like a bird dog's face after a head-on collision with a porcupine. Harrison was driving in patterns that made no sense until a huge covey of blues flushed ahead of the chugging vehicle.
When I say the covey was huge, I don't mean 25 birds (my usual yardstick for huge coveys). I'd never seen that many quail in the air at one time. When they hit the ground and sprinted through the cactus, it looked like the starting line of the Boston Marathon and all the runners were wearing cotton-topped toboggans.
400 to 500 quail
Harrison unloaded an eager Brittany and we started after the quail. Midland County received an unusual amount of rain in September and the ground cover is much thicker than usual. The hard-running blues lost sight of one another, and some became confused. Most kept running like they could see the finish line, but there were at least 50 birds in this bunch and a few of them ducked into clumps of prickly pear or bunch grass and hunkered down.
They flushed when we got too close for comfort. At least some of them flushed. Harrison has learned that there are always more hidden birds than you think and it's a mistake to chase after the roadrunners. His dogs point a few blues that hide in the grass. Those that hide in prickly pear and refuse to fly are safe. They wear the pear patches like a thorny armor. Their subtle scent rises through the interior chimney of the cactus clumps, making it difficult for a dog to smell the hidden birds.
An examination of the quail crops from harvested birds indicated a wide variety of seeds and greens. Most of the birds also had a subtle red wine-colored stain around their faces where they'd been eating red cactus fruit.
In most blue quail hunting scenarios, it is not unusual to chase after a covey and never fire a shot. In Midland County, there were so many blues that we almost always got a shot or two when we got off the ATV. When we were certain the covey had escaped, we got back aboard and resumed the random driving. We never went more than 15 minutes without seeing a covey.
By the lunch break, I had 11 birds in the bag and should have had a complete limit of 15 quail. Harrison doesn't count coveys because coveys are so big they don't make sense to the average quail hunter. Instead of coveys, he estimates how many birds he sees.
In our half-day of hunting, Harrison figured we moved 400 to 500 quail. I couldn't argue with that estimate. The amazing thing is that we covered less than 1,000 acres to find that many birds, and we certainly didn't find them all.
100 at once
After lunch, we teamed up with Austin's Scott Ritchie, Jim Houston and Bob Wilbur. They were hunting with Wilson and quail guide Tim Meador. The afternoon hunt was a repeat of the morning action. I finished my limit in about an hour, then tagged along and took photos. The most quail I ever saw in the air at one time was about 100. Harrison said he didn't find it particularly unusual.
"I had three hunters with me one day and we pushed a big covey of birds into a grassy draw," he said. "When the hunters got to the edge of the cover, about 100 birds flushed and the hunters shot. When they shot, more birds flush- ed. After that, the birds just flush- ed in waves as covey after covey left the draw. Three guys were shooting and they only hit one quail."
Small wonder, when faced with what may have been the biggest "covey rise" in quail hunting history. Wilson was right. Midland County is the blue quail capital of Texas. It has more blues than New Orleans, and this is a year when the blues have a majority in more ways than one. For information on Midland quail hunting, call Texas Best Outfitters at 325-773-2457.