New Mexico Blue-Scaled Quail hunt

Tammy and I had a great time out in Alamogordo NM with our long time friends, Michael & Laura Precure. In addition to revisiting times of past we had some great hunting!

Jager standing tall, looking for the Blue Quail

Checking out the Blue Quail. As far as I can remember, this was my first one ever. 

Kapitan checking out the Blue Quail

This was a great sequence to follow, would have been great in video. Jager was over to my left with Michael, Kapitan was just in front of me. Kapitan flushed 2 Blue Quail, and they flew to my right, I shot one, Kapitan sprinted over to it, picked it up, and looked as if he was going to bring it to me. Everybody was cheering for him along with me trying to call him to me. He held it for a second, then dropped it and waited for me to come over. I gave Jager the "dead bird" command and he went and got it and brought it to me. Kapitan is going to be great! Definitely not gun shy and aggressively pursued the birds. Just gotta get him to understand retrieve to hand (he already does it in practice, but the real thing is different the first time).

Kapitan picking up the Blue Quail, I'm trying to call him over, Jager walking over to see what lil bro is doing. 

Kapitan picked up the bird and looked at me for a moment, but he didn't bring it to me. This was the only photo and unfortunately, out of focus, but worth saving. I was proud all the same.

After Kapitan didn't bring me the bird, Jager trotted over and took care of it.

Jager retrieving, me praising him, Kapitan observing and learning

Tired puppies, Blue Quail & Browning Shotguns. 

Tammy did a great job with the photos. Note the great telephoto focus on the tiny bird on the cactus.

Gambles Quail seasons end

Last weekend for Gambles Quail in Nevada and Arizona. Jager, Kapitan and I set out to Wikieup AZ for an overnight trip and all day hunt. We jeeped down into a deep canyon close to where I had camped previously but closer to the area I suspected to have a lot of birds. The downside of these areas with lots of birds is exactly the reason there are a lot of birds. VERY rough cover, coyotes, hawks and others can't get to them, which of course is why there are so many birds! Next year I plan to significantly upgrade my cactus protective gear, but for this trip, I decided to bring Kapitan with me, and primarily hunt the river beds. This made the walking much easier, but the birds were primarily up and outside the banks of the stream hiding in the scrub oak and other cactus like plants.