So their meat is dark? Like a duck? I have never seen nor hunted them. Sounds like a great time!

Too old, too little, said Goldilocks
 

Our guys told us to bring autoloaders which would hold 4 or more shots. Magazine extenders would be very helpful! We told him we would mainly be using vintage guns, which he was not excited about. However, like your story, we killed the birds in front of us. Although the shots were long, chickens die pretty easily so low weight loads were not the problem....

Yes, the meat is dark. When you cook it rare to med-rare it leaves some blood for moisture and tastes like red meat.

The problem with some outfitters is they don't understand our way of thinking when it comes to bird hunting shotguns. I've never felt undergunned when using a 2 barreled gun and couldn't imagine carrying a jam-o-matic with an extended magazine walking the prairie.

Years ago a local here who used to be an FAA guru at the Pierre SD airport found out I had a business trip coming up, and put me in touch with some of his buddies there for a combined pheasant and sharptail hunt a couple of days before my meetings. I asked them what type of gun I should bring and they said "bring your favorite duck gun; we'll be hunting over dogs of 'dubious field performance' and you'll need lots of choke for the long shots. I did what they told me and packed my 12 ga. 30" barrel GHE choked F&F. We hunted south of Pierre, alternating prarie between the whistle stop towns of Murdo, Presho, Vivian and Draper.

The dogs consisted of my first-ever exposure to a pointing Lab, a brawler of a big raw-boned male Brittany spaniel, and a hound-type dog of indeterminant origin. The Lab actually pointed, the Brit actually found and retrieved birds, and the hound dog chased around and actually located some cripples we would have never found. Each of the 3 of us got a rooster pheasant, and the over-the-top highlight for me was scoring a left then right double out of three sharptails that came up abreast about 35 yards ahead of the dogs, who were working them. At the rise I killed the bird on the left, swung through the center bird, and killed the bird on the right almost in the same motion. Both fell out dead and I suspect the third one was in Canada before I reloaded.

Mark, wait, you're not from Manhattan?

For me it’s all about the dog work so using a double is perfect for most of my wild quail hunting.
We generally hunt 6 or 7 hours each day.
With a Mearns quail the limit is 8 birds per day. ( I wish they would set the limit at 4 or 5). With an Automatic early in the season, your hunt could be over pretty quick and the dogs you have trained and feed for 10 months only get a couple of points.
This is especially true if you are hunting several of your dogs that day.
Not only that but a fair number of birds have been lost when multiple Mearns are shot.
It’s baffling at times how hard it can be for even seasoned dogs to locate a dead bird after they have been knocked down.
Even more so when they have a little life left in them.
Like a fine whiskey you need to savor it, not knock it out on a couple of swallows.

The “trophy” is the entire experience — the setting, the dog, the gun, and who you’re with, not killing the limit or piling birds on the tailgate.

The guide wants the advertising of big takes.

We are hunting more than birds.

T.H. Elsner near Loup City, Neb., 1895 with a Parker

https://photos.smugmug.com/Vintage-H...r%201895-M.jpg