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

[charlie cleveland]

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

[ArtS]

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.

[6pt-Sika]

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 .

[6pt-Sika]

Originally Posted by Reggie Bishop

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

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 .

[mobirdhunter]

Originally Posted by Jerry Harlow

Gary,

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

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.

[mobirdhunter]

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.

[Mike Franzen]

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

[mobirdhunter]

Originally Posted by Mike Franzen

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).

[Stan Hillis]

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