Nebraska Wild Quail Hunt

On Wednesday, January 30, 2008 Matt Dancer and myself went on the last wild quail hunt of the year. The South Platte River here in Nebraska has some great bobwhite quail hunting if you can get permission. We took Max and Chance-both Labs, and Abe and Ivy-English Pointers. Before the hunt really got started we noticed Abe retrieving some thing with fur. Matt and I both looked at one another kind of puzzled as neither of us had taken a shot. To our surprise the furry thing was alive and to say the least not very happy. Abe was his usual self all happy to make a retrieve and wanting us to take it. This brings back memories as a kid seeing for the first time an opossum playing dead. After several tense minutes we were able to get the 'possum from Abe with no one getting hurt.

The one problem with hunting the Platte River system is that it has several channels instead of one main channel. In order to get the dogs to cover all the ground we had to get across those channels and hunt the small islands. Now if you have never seen an English Pointer swim it is not a pretty sight. They just do not have the pad size that a Lab has. Matt had to use the stock of his gun in places to break ice in order to get Ivy across. The weather this day was in the 20’s and Max and Chance took advantage of every opportunity they could to go swimming. This is not really a problem, but we did not bring the dog trailer and we only had kennels for the pointers. Good thing the Excursion has leather seats.

We saw several covies in the few hours we hunted but as usual the final tally was hunters ZERO and the quail way ahead. No matter what excuse I can come up with it was still the most fun a guy can have with his clothes on.

Jay Longacre-Head Guide & Hunt Coordinator
Prairie Sands Hunting-Sutherland, NE