I came across this picture of me, self-taken, after a day hunting blues in the TX panhandle. You can't see it but there is a limit of the little cotton-tops on the ground by my knee. We were driving out after a frustrating day, thinking about moving on up to SD, when I saw a bird flush to my left. I stopped, grabbed my gun, Ace, and a pocket of shells and stepped off the graded sand road of the ranch. Right then the world exploded when about 30 blues got up all around me! I mean, we were in the middle of them- and a bunch more ran off into the brush. Ace locked up to the flush and I watched as they scattered out along a stretch of flat, brushy, sandy, grazed-over pasture. The sun was at my back, the breeze was in my face, it was 30 deg. and there was a big grin on my face as we set out to some of the best shooting I've ever seen. Ace locked up time after time pointing two and/or three of the little buzz bombs before they erupted out of the pointed cactus, shin-oak, or grass pile. What a great time! We took our time, easing along and hitting all the cover, ditches and vegetation. What seemed like 5 minutes later (actually an hour or so), I grabbed for more shells and came up empty- with a dog on point, the sun on the horizon and the temperature dropping like a stone. I had one shell left in the A.H.Fox 20 ga. double and was one bird shy of the limit here in TX. (Limits never held much fascination for me- I rarely get close enough to worry about them on quail- but today it would be nice to round it out.) Ace was intensely pointed at the base of a cactus as I eased on up alongside him. I glanced at his face and it was set in that stoney look bird dogs get when they are dead center of the scent cone- almost mesmerized by the smell. I kicked at the shrub and 5 gray blurs came out of that cactus heading in all points of the compass! As a lefty, I locked down on the one heading from my left to right, checked his location down the barrels and pulled the trigger.......
It was a day to remember.
