Quail Hunting in Maryland, a look back

[Tom Flanigan]

These are some pictures of my second best grouse dog quail hunting in Maryland in the area Bill Murphy and I used to hunt. My current English Setter is a very good bird dog, but I still miss Stoney terribly, as I do all my departed gun dogs. It still hurts a bit to look at the pictures I took of him.

[Researcher]

Very nice. I have fond memories of Quail hunting in Southern Maryland and on the Eastern Shore back in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

[Robert Brooks]

Beautiful setter! Bobby

[Kevin McCormack]

From the mid-1960s through the early 1980s, some of the very best quail hunting on the Delmarva Peninsula could be found on the big farms near the tiny villages of Powellville, Waste Gate and Wango on MD's Eastern Shore and in DE just adjacent to the north-south border with MD in places like Whigville, Chapeltown and Reeves Crossing. In what is now popularly referred to as "The People's Republic of Montgomery County", the village of Boyds and its surrounding farms were one of the most closely guarded quail hunting locations in our area.

[Double Lab]

It was 1970 and I was sitting in a deer stand in Dorchester Co., MD waiting for that record breaking whitetail to amble by. But instead a covey of quail walked by in single file.

That was enough to shift my focus to to Mr. Bob White.

Back then I had access to numerous farms in Dorchester Co. to hunt deer and waterfowl but these farms had a bonus of Colinus Virginianus.

It's a really long story but a WWll bomber pilot had an English pointer who had heartworm disease and was going to put him down. I took him, treated him for the disease, then hunted him for 12 years. The veterinerian who treated him and cured him, became a lifelong friend and hunting partner.

We hunted quail for years until they dissapeared never taking more than 4 birds from a covey.

Seems like so long ago but so many great memories.

Thanks for the thread Tom.

[Joe D.]

In the 80s we hunted a lot of farms east of Rte.50 along Rte.16 east and points south. Secretary, Hurlock, Eldorado and the entire area. Wonderful memories of Brittanies with the intense points which only a covey of wild quail can trigger!! Little did I fully realize how good I had it back then!
Tom, Stoney was quite a beautiful dog!

[mobirdhunter]

Sometimes it's hard to believe how quickly quail hunting bottomed out in the Mid-Atlantic and South. "My" quail in peninsular Virginia were showing signs of decline even back in the 1970s, but we still found birds on paper company lands in the Piedmont into the late 1980s. It's nice to remember how it was.

Progress giveth, and Progress taketh away.

[Gary Laudermilch]

When I was in college in southern PA in the late 60's we hunted birds on nearby farms. The primary target was pheasants but we seemed to move as many quall. No dog then but we had no trouble finding them. Pheasants were not overly abundant in that locale but just 60 miles north and it was reversed. Hordes of pheasants and but an occasional covey of quail. Sadly both are gone now and have been for some time. The last of the good pheasant hunting was in the late 70's and no quail could be found.

[Kevin McCormack]

Gary, I related in some earlier posts my experiences pheasant hunting in MD just below the PA border in the Silver Run Valley area. This would have been c. 1964 when you could still knock on doors and most people would let you hunt. I don't recall seeing quail in and around the farms we hunted but I'm sure there were some there.

None of us had bird dogs and we started out with some of us using single-shot guns, just walking them up. Between college classes and jobs, we would go whenever we got the chance. I remember one early morning after a substantial snowfall of a couple of feet, getting my car stuck trying to power through a snowdrift near Woodbine MD just below Westminster. Lucky for us, a friendly farmer fired up his tractor and pulled us out so we could continue the hunt. In those days, big roosters were everywhere in that area, and it was rare that we came home without at least one. Nowadays, when a cockbird is seen crossing the road, cars pull over so people can take pictures with their cellphones, like buffalos in Yellowstone. Hard to believe they are now mostly all gone.

[Tom Flanigan]

I lived for twenty three years in the area Kevin refers to. I only saw two pheasants in all that time. I was hunting with Jeff Mulliken and we got one of them. Jeff’s yellow lab Luke grabbed the pheasant for the retrieve and Stoney the English setter, not to be outdone, grabbed the bird also and they came back to us with both dogs holding on to the pheasant. Jeff and I laughed like hell. I wish I had a picture of it.

My hunting as a kid was mostly out my back door for grouse. I was lucky in that I had my grandfather’s VH 20 bore for the grouse and woodcock. But at times my mother would drop me off a couple of miles away for pheasants. There were large numbers of pheasants which I would take with my grandfather’s 12 bore DHE. The land, being a large estate, was never developed to this day. There are still many wild pheasants but nowhere near the numbers when I was a kid.




Three pictures….one of Jeff and I hunting quail and another of my childhood back porch. The other picture is of me planting sorghum for the pheasants. We manage the property closely to ensure good pheasant feed and cover.