3-26 SS Matador Quail

  On a recent trip to the Matador Ranch which is a huge private working cattle ranch just outside of Lubbock, Texas, I went quail hunting with outfitter Les Woolsey. The ranch doubles as a wonderful hunting operation where you can get massive whitetails, more than you can imagine in Rio Grande turkeys, and quail by the thousands. But the part I found most interesting was the way that quail are hunted. We talk about Southern style on buggies. Here’s Les:  “On quail hunting, most of the time you have the dogs, we normally run buggies so you can carry extra fresh dogs with you because in this big country out here you can cover so many acres, so many miles in a day that we will put a couple of dogs on the ground and you follow along with the buggy and when you finally get a point, UAE’s up behind them, get out and get on either side and make sure that everybody is set up and move in. Hopefully the birds  will not wild flush on you and hold. Get your covey rise, numbers are off a little bit right now, we try to get the covey to rise and take a few birds out and leave the rest of them for someone else to enjoy.”