Quail hunting - born to a saddle in the Old South

“A glimpse into the past from the back of a walking horse.”

By Gary Lewis 

No one answered our knock. Brian Smith turned the knob and we stepped into the quiet living room. Quiet voices drifted from the kitchen. And smells, fried quail, beans, cabbage and pecan pie.

Bessie sat on a stool in front of the kitchen sink and GeorgeAnn leaned against the counter, shredding walnuts for the cookies.

We stacked luggage in the front room and retired to the porch. Smith claimed a rocking chair, selected a cigar and uncorked a bottle of amber liquid.

“I was born for this,” he said, and pointed his cigar at the sunset. No doubt of that.

Way back on my momma’s side we were from the South too, by way of the Nolichucky and Memphis. Now here we were with Wighardt van der Gryp, a professional hunter from the other South – South Africa – and Sam Pyke who grew up south of the Columbia River. Jim Linder, from North Carolina, rolled in a few minutes later.

We had driven out of Birmingham hours before, and wound our way onto a narrow back road to a town called Hatchechubbee where Don and Maybell Dixon run Dixieland Plantation.

“This was my daddy’s place and his daddy’s before him,” Dixon said slow, soft. If I did the math right, Dixon was 80-years-old or close to it. In the morning he would show us this land he grew up on.

“I was born for this,” Smith said as he shoved an L.C. Smith double gun into the scabbard and turned the plantation horse in a circle. No doubt. Smith was schooled at The Citadel where the cadets still wear the gray they donned in the War of Northern Aggression.

In the morning, we didn’t spend a lot of time getting to know Dixon or the horse handler, Dan Nelson. Instead, we patted our horses’ necks, promised we’d treat them right, tightened stirrups and swung into saddles.

We rode into the pine trees. Ahead of us, Bob, a nine-year-old English pointer quivered with excitement. As he cut back and forth, I watched the horses. None of them seemed to pay attention to the dog except Blaze, Dixon’s mount.

Blaze watched every turn the dog made, out there in the pines, in the wild broom straw, down the open lanes cut for the horses.

On a hill planted to knee-high cover allowed to grow wild, Bob’s body language changed. His tail flagged, his muscles tensed and he turned tighter circles – cat-like – to stand, one front leg off the ground, tail at a diagonal, rigid, nose turned into a narrow strip of cover.

“Look out, Bob,” Dixon said in a low voice. Bob lifted his chin, but held. The birds were close. Dixon glanced over his shoulder.

“Two,” he said, which meant two of us would dismount and load guns. “One on this side and one on that,” he said like he only wanted to tell us once.

We walked past the birds first then turned and walked back, slow. Six quail flushed. I saw two, one jinking wild, and the other six feet off the top of the grass, arcing toward a stand of pines. I shot it and let the other one go. My brain registered a reddish brown sort of bobwhite-shaped blur and the bead and the trigger and a puff of feathers that drifted on the breeze.

Each time the dog pointed and held tight, Dixon would dismount and that was our signal. He didn’t turn and wait, he expected us there alongside, two steps ahead on either side, close, but not too close to the dog.

I shot the Weatherby like I was born to it, taking five quail – four reds and a bobwhite – in the first five shots. We finished the morning with 14 birds and returned to the house where Bessie and GeorgeAnn had lunch on the table.

Lunch, a nap on the porch, sweet tea in a tall glass and we were revived. Back at the loafing shed, the horses watered and fed, waited at the hitching rail. But this was not why we were here.

Dixon had a foot in the stirrup when I stopped him. A dog named Annie was on a lead. I wanted to know where he was born and when. Dixon said he was born in the house his grandma was born in. Dan Nelson was born in Hurtsboro and he worked at the cotton gin for 30 years before he came to work for Dixon – both men born of the Great Depression.

A day in the saddle gives time to think. I wondered what brought me across the continent. It wasn't to ride a strawberry roan named Bert, to sit a saddle, to walk up on a pointer named Bob or Della or Annie. I didn’t come for the simple joy of the swing and shoot at blurs of red and white in these tall, skinny pine trees.

I wanted to hear the wind, and feel the saddle leather creak beneath me and the thump of hooves on the plank bridge over the crick. This was the land of the Creek Indians and then of Frenchmen who left France because they weren’t welcome there anymore. It was the land the Cherokees walked away from in tears. It was the land we were born to. Our daddies and their daddies before them.

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Gary Lewis is the host of Frontier Unlimited TV and author of Fishing Central Oregon, Fishing Mount Hood Country, Hunting Oregon and other titles. Contact Gary at www.GaryLewisOutdoors.com.

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