No New Year's Parade in North Missouri...BUT
 

...we had some fireworks in the form of burnt powder in pursuit of wild Missouri Bobs. After a week of long, bird-less hunts, our spirits were dragging. So, we were desperate to find a covey or two on our traditional New Year's Eve and New Year's Day hunts. On both occasions we hunted hard and thought to again go home without a chance when each dog "pulled a covey out of their hats" that gave us our chance. My Christmas present from Elaine -- an AHE 12 -- made me a better shooter, and we came home with the gifts that are wild birds taken from home covers.

Here's to the new year!

Beautiful and inspiring country! Looks relatively mild as well. Enjoy the rest of the season

Thanks, Aaron. New Year’s Eve was 55 degrees. A week earlier on Christmas Eve, it was minus 12. Gather ye hunts while ye may.

Beautiful country, dogs and Parker! Thanks again for sharing your hunts with us! Bittersweet for me as I recall hunts from my past.

Reggie, I still recall your poignant piece in our Parker Pages from a few years back. It seems we all lose our treasured places as the years go by. The place may still be there, but without the birds, the treasure is lost.

Garry, It just doesn't get any better than to be able to enjoy the beautiful country side with your dogs, a beautiful Parker and your best friend by your side... Thanks Elaine for the great pics

Beautiful birds, country and Parker AH! Nice to see it out in the field. Your a blessed man lovely wife, guns and pups. Enjoy 2023

nothing like takeing wild birds on your home fields...its been many years since I ve shot a bird on our fields....charlie

Charlie it’s obvious you are a Southern gentleman. When us Southerners talk about “birds” we know that means bobwhite quail!

Gary,

I am envious because as you well know, the Old Dominion was once like those photos, but it is "Gone With the Wind."

reggie your right I am a southerner from ole miss...I growed up shooting birds meaning quail and shooting double guns...never got to see a parker double till I was about 40 years old....all doubles were mostly lc smith or stevens....still not many parkers around here...I guess I m the onlyone in my area that shoots parkers but I know of a few fellows from miss that do own and shoot parkers....charlie

Those pictures remind me exactly of the huge farm we used to drive to from Eastern Ky to hunt turkey. This was during the 1980's and the farm was in Kirksville MO It was a hunting dream. They had maybe the highest turkey density in the country, I saw pictures of winter flocks of pheasant that numbered 100 or more in the fallow fields, huge covies of bobwhites would blow up around you when moving between stands and I had a huge 12 or 14 point whitetail jump over my head crossing a creek at dawn when I was using a creek bank as a bunker for calling.

The state had a huge impact here. KY always had a lot of river otters, and trading them led directly to the turkey flocks we now have and to many of the elk herds which have been firmly re-established in the state, to the point that their growth has to be pretty much capped. The turkey are so plentiful that we now see 4 or 5 a morning around our house.

I feel good about the fact that turkey are now everywhere, deer are almost a nuisance, elk have taken over their original range here and we now even have huntable numbers of black bear. Geese still migrate on the Mississippi and doves are in all the cornfields. The negative thing of course is that quail are essentially not huntable (at least I wish they would be protected and grouse are way down). These two really common birds when I was young provided 90% of my outdoor activity. My two grandkids may never have an opportunity. I am bothered by the fact that they can accomplish all these rejuvenations on large ecosystem animals, but our culture and farming practices have changed so much that birds that were common as dirt and require relatively little area to live cannot find areas of only a few acres where they can survive.

I can remember looking out of my bedroom window when I was a kid and seeing coveys of quail in my mothers chrysanthemum beds not five yards from the window . But our next door neighbor farmer friend didn’t practice clean fence rows at that time .

I knew two older gentleman that lived down around Farmville VA . One of them trained bird dogs . Anyway the way they said birds there was no “I” in the spelling of the word .

Jerry, I fear Missouri is headed that way, too. Poor Bob has almost everything against him today. I used to gauge a successful hunt by how close I came to a limit. Today a good day is just getting out with the chance to see a covey.

It’s interesting reading the replies to my post from folks who knew Bob in days past. I think he’s become a piece of nostalgia for a generation. I enjoyed the reminiscences.

Art, we live just north of Kirksville…and our Kentucky elk and otters are doing well.

What a great Christmas gift. Way to go Elaine! Tell us more about the gun.

Hey, Mike,

The gun is a mid-1920s AHE. It has two sets of barrels and forends. One set is 30" fluid steel, the other 27" Damascus. Those short barrels (cut, no doubt) are good on the covey rise...even for this mediocre shot.

Regards to Ben...and to Julia (who I hope we meet some day).

That is just beautiful bird cover. If I were a "quail bird" I'd stay there, too!