Bird Hunters dressed up like Eskimos!

Just home from a week at Dos Jefes with friends, a bunch of bird dogs, and more quail than this man could have ever dreamed of seeing in such a short time. Our friends the Hoffmans (Jerry & Julie) from Dallas join us each year at the ranch for Deer and Quail hunting and trips to the shopping meccas of McAllen and Kingsville's "King Ranch Store" and some place named the "Cactus Flower". Too bad the 'world famous King's Inn" closes during the holidays!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch....Jerry and I and our combined 6 dogs, my son Eric and daughter in law Sarah and their 3 Brittanys, along with two of the finest quail shooters I have ever witnessed, Austin's Gareth Cook (with 1 tremendous Brit) and Ed Small (with 1 terrific Lab), challenged 20 foot tall sunflower loaded with state of the art Tritronics, DT Systems, Dogtra and Garmin technology and found, and even pointed, a world of quail. The most impressive thing about the weekend was the 'size' of the covies...I know, I've been accused of 'overcounting' in the past, but these covies were HUGE! Many 15 plus birds and Ed Small even claims to have seen the largest covey (or a convention of multiples) containing 0ver 30 (!) birds. Thursday afternoon in two hours, we moved 21 covies and flushed numerous more as we drove out of the Mill Pasture area.

The cover is still very tough and Gareth's incredile dog "Annie" kept pulling us into some very difficult country with multiple finds that we could never have seen had it not been for the Garmin Astro Collars (3 of them at work at one time!). Riding along in our VW "Boss Buses" became more like sitting in 'mission control' with beeps and squeaks from all the electronics that are now a must in running bird dogs.

Oh well, it was a great weekend (in spite of a horrid case of allergies on my part). Jerry, Gareth and Ed are real gentlemen and fine sportsman....Gareth's Lamb chops and Ribs and Jerry and Julie's Nebraska "Scotch Pheasant" made the evenings very special.

Happy New Year guys and thanks for the memories!