I was born in Clovis, and grew up in eastern New Mexico. The country around Clovis was flat, treeless and dry, and the wind was out of the west¼ the wind was always out of the west. The makeup of the topsoil in the region was predominantly sandy loam; granular, unstable, and incessantly wanting to move. And there was very little vegetation around to hold it in place.

While I was a kid, dry land farmers in eastern New Mexico were still hoping against hope that one season or another, they might receive enough rainfall to nurture a crop of wheat or corn into maturity; but it didn't happen. What did happen was, in their efforts to scratch out a living on those high, dry, Southwestern plains, their plowing created incessant clouds of brown dirt, rising above the flat land, forming a dense billow of dust, hitching free passage on the westerly wind. The dust was finely ground, perpetually present, and it filtered through, around, and into, everything. It was in our eyes. It was in our nostrils, mouths, and throats. It was between our necks and the collars of our shirts, and it was a non-ending grit between our teeth. It was in our food, in our ears, and it simply was in our lives. There seemed to be nothing we could do about it.

Around that time, Congress adopted the federal "soil bank" program, and as local farmers became aware of the subsidy, many threw up their hands, swallowed their pride and signed up for it. Over time, most of the farmers left the country behind and moved into town, and one after another, the dry land farms became abandoned, left to fend for themselves against the elements. As they did, the unplowed ground came to life with natural vegetation; tumbleweeds, high plains grasses, sagebrush, cactus and thorny mesquite, began arising from a dormant sleep, taking root, gradually spreading over thousands of acres... and stabilizing the sandy soil. We were pleased enough to be rid of the dusty clouds of brown dirt, but little did we know, another benefit was soon to arrive. The old houses, barns and other outbuildings, and those blessed piles of junk¼ the inevitable companions of any self-respecting dry land farm, became a haven of protection for blue quail. With dramatically improved cover, the quail began surviving in greater numbers, both from hunting pressures and natural predators. Their propagation became exponential, with more survivors producing larger crops of birds, which produced more survivors to breed the following year, and at least for the foreseeable future, upland game hunters in Eastern New Mexico were entering the brink of blue quail Heaven. Places where quail had never been seen boasted new coveys of them, and places where they had always been, became havens for more. Bag limits in the following four years went from twelve birds to fifteen a day, then eighteen, and finally, twenty.

Twelve years of age at the time, I started hunting quail with my Dad, who taught me the fundamentals of shotgunning, and even today, those lessons endure. Never pot-shoot into a rising covey, son. Keep your wits about you and pick out a single bird... that's your target. Riding to the first hunting spot of the day, before daylight, it was all I could do in my excited state to absorb the lessons. Your first responsibility is to others. Guns kill¼ always be sure your shot is safe before pulling the trigger. Then there was that annoying westerly wind¼ birds swinging to the right or left after breaking from cover. On passing shots, follow through. Don't brake the sweep of your barrel, or you'll shoot behind the bird every time.

But then came the action¼ rising birds, the heart-stopping whir of sixty stubby wings bursting into flight, shattering the silence of dawn, electrifying the moment. Shotguns belched as the birds became airborne, followed by dead silence¼ and a pungent sea of spent gunpowder wafting through the still air. (Author's note: Most women don't realize this, but the aroma of exhausted gunpowder to an upland game hunter is as sweet and magnetic as the most sensuous perfume with which a damsel can anoint herself. It is no sweeter, mind you, this Eau de Sulfur Nitrate, and no more magnetic¼ but it is every bit as much so.) The quail were everywhere, and the training ground for a beginning quail hunter was a target-rich environment. Dad and I hunted quail together many times during those bumper crop years, enjoying the outdoors together, concocting the normal hunting competitions; who could shoot the most birds in sequence without a miss¼ who had the best overall shooting record for the day, and always the crowning prize... who had been fortunate enough to get a double. As my shooting skills sharpened, the competition between us tightened, and I could see the pride in his expression on the rare occasions when I would win. But in all that time, I don't recall having one conversation about the possibility of bagging a triple on a covey rise; it seemed to be beyond our reach.

The actual name of the blue quail is scaled quail, slate-blue in color, with a lined pattern around each feather, giving the bird the appearance of being covered with oval scales. Slightly larger than bobs and less flamboyantly colored, blues have acquired different natural habits, as well. The coveys usually don't explode from under the hunter's feet like bobs... blues tend to run. Owing, no doubt, to their evolution in a desert environment, blues enjoy longer-range visibility, and a distinctly reduced availability of cover¼ so when they see hunters approaching, blues run. At that moment, not only is it acceptable to shoot into the middle of the covey, it is unacceptable to do otherwise. After the first shot is fired, the birds flush and scatter. Then they tend to freeze where they light, providing hunters with an opportunity to walk up singles and doubles.

I was fifteen when the quail population-boom peaked and began its decline, and my Dad, my brother, Cal, and I were invited to hunt quail on the posted property of an acquaintance located west, and a little north of Fort Sumner, New Mexico. I had hunted quail in the general area before, and I was aware of a number of places where quail had abounded in the past. On several occasions, while hunting alone, I had encountered coveys of two hundred, or so, birds ... an astounding number of quail in a single covey. After many years of hunting quail in New Mexico, this was the only part of the country I knew of which could produce quail in such numbers. But that had been several years before, and now things seemed to be different. Through the morning, the talk in the pickup periodically returned to the same subject; too much hunting pressure, bad weather, low survival rates, and the quail population had dwindled. So far, the hunt had seemed to confirm those observations. We encountered only about twenty birds all morning, and we had only three in the bag; not a good tally for a half-day's hunting with four hunters. The flicker of the flame of optimism never goes away within the heart of an upland game hunter... but it was smoldering pretty quietly in ours at that point.

Through the heat of the desert day, blue quail retreat to a shady, protected spot to rest. Their afternoon feed and evening watering trip are still before them, but for awhile, they must escape the rays of the sun and rest; so the mid-day hunt for blue quail is often only a guessing game. With adequate cover available, they could be almost anywhere, so frequently, all the hunters can do is scout about, hoping to stumble across a stray covey. We drove farther north than I had ever been, finally stopping at an arroyo somewhere in the middle of the vast, nondescript desert country.

"You boys get out and walk for awhile, and your dad and I will range out across the pasture in the pickup and see if we can scare something up. If we do, we'll honk the horn... so listen up."

Cal and I got out, stuffed the pockets of our jeans with 2-3/4" number sixes, and watched the pickup drive away, leaving us in a vast, open prairie of grass and sand.

Cal started loading his shotgun. "What do you want to do, Mike?"

I scanned the countryside for a few moments before pointing to the bottom of the desert washout. "Let's walk through this arroyo for awhile. We might see some tracks along the bottom in the sandy stretches."

Cal nodded in agreement. "Okay." Coordinating our pace and staying abreast of each other, Cal walked along the north bank of the arroyo, and I took the south side. The arroyo ranged from fifty, to about a hundred feet across, and the bottom of the dry gulch was mostly hard-pan, washed and blown clean, but to either side were meandering deposits of finely ground sand. If birds had recently crossed the arroyo in a sandy spot, their tracks would reveal their approximate numbers and direction of travel. From time to time, each of us would stop, stand still, and wait for the other to look in his direction. A head shake or a nod would tell the story. Then we would resume our slow, deliberate inspection of the arroyo floor.

After walking a half to three quarters of a mile, I stopped and looked at Cal. He was facing me, and his eyes were as big as saucers. His right hand, bent at the wrist, index finger extended downward, was pumping frantically, pointing toward the sand. He had obviously found tracks, but, from his expression and body language, it was clear that something extraordinary was afoot. I shrugged my shoulders, puzzled. His eyes impatiently opened wider, and he accentuated the downward pistoning of his right hand. I nodded to him; the message seemed clear... he must have seen lots of tracks. In my mind's eye, I imagined perhaps forty to sixty birds in the covey. Cal wasn't given to exaggeration, so I knew he was seeing signs of quail in large numbers.

Now the adrenalin started flowing, and we slowed the pace of our stalk, continuing forward. Looking across the arroyo floor every few seconds, Cal continued giving me reassuring nods... he was still onto the birds. After about fifteen minutes of stalking, again I looked across the floor at Cal, but this time he was standing still. He looked up at me and shook his head. The tracks were gone. A few more minutes of walking... then I looked again. He stood up straight and shrugged his shoulders... still no sign. Comparing notes later, we found we were having the same thoughts. The birds might have turned north, topping Cal's bank of the arroyo, seeking cover somewhere out on the flat land beyond. Or, they could have crossed the rock-hard bottom of the basin to my side. I pointed forward, and Cal nodded. If we came up empty moving forward, we could always backtrack and pick up the tracks again. We continued walking, fifty, then a hundred feet... with no sign on either side. Then we stalked another hundred feet... still no sign.

At the time, I was considering joining Cal on his side of the gulch to huddle; we had seen no sign of the quail for too long, and it might be time to talk and decide what to do next. As I had that thought, I stepped forward onto an island of sand and looked down... the sight I saw could only be described as inspirational. Hundreds of birds had been traveling down the center of the hard pan floor of the arroyo without a trace, before finally crossing to the soft sand on my side. I looked over at Cal, but he wasn't looking back. For what seemed like an eternity, I waited, my heart pounding with anticipation. When he finally looked at me, I found myself, wide-eyed, the index finger of my left hand, pumping up and down, excitedly pointing toward the tracks in the sand. Cal's face broke into a smile, and resting his gun on his shoulder, he trotted across the floor of the arroyo and joined me.

I whispered to him, "Look at this... just look at this! There are hundreds of them!"

"I know, I know... that's what I was trying to tell you."

The flicker of the flame of optimism in these two bird hunters had just been fueled.

The tracks formed an unbroken web across the spit of sand, a lacy pattern of blue quail toes, all pointing to the west. There was no way of telling how many there were, but it had to be hundreds. We walked on, following the footprints, crossing a hard pan, barren stretch of ground quickly, until we reached the next deposit of sand, where we once again picked up the trail. I pictured the birds in my mind's eye, as I studied the tracks. Cal began to move forward again, but I reached out with my right hand, still looking down, and stopped him. Near the end of the sandy spit, the toes of the tracks no longer pointed west. They turned off in more of a southwesterly direction, In the beginning, only a few tracks broke to the left... then a few more... and then all of them. Using my right arm, I swung my pointing hand across the surface of the sand in alignment with the direction the tracks were now heading. At the end of the arc, my finger was centered on a small washed out gully, which broke the otherwise vertical wall of the south bank. The gully was narrow at the top, and then widened as it descended to meet the floor of the arroyo. It was the only spot in view providing foot access to the top of the gulch. Cal nodded, acknowledging my gesture, and we both walked silently toward the washed-out gully.

Sure enough, when we arrived, the tracks were there. The sand at the base of the gully was littered with them, and they were all heading into the washout. We slowed our approach to a snail's pace, both focusing on the upper edge of the gully, and we began to climb, quietly. As we cleared the upper edge, we discovered that the flat, grassy terrain of the plains around the arroyo had changed. The ground here was dotted with sandy mounds, separated by hard pan floorways, and atop each hill was an outgrowth of snarly, thorny, mesquite. Directly in the path of our approach, about fifty yards away, was the tallest and thickest outgrowth of them all, easily three feet taller than the tallest of the other mounds. It stood out like a beacon... a magnet of protective cover for the birds. This had to be the spot.

We looked at each other and nodded; nothing needed to be said. We were of a single mind as we tiptoed in crouched positions, our eyes fixed on the mesquite cover. I gestured toward the left edge of the mound, and Cal nodded, turning toward the left side, as I veered to the right.

The mound was, perhaps, forty feet wide at its widest point near the center, and around a hundred feet long. As we drew nearer, we could see the thickness of the vegetation, a mass of branches and thorns, impenetrable by hawks and owls. At the base of each plant was a hollow, averaging perhaps four to six inches in height, before the thorn-covered stems branched out horizontally and then rose upward. There was no room here for a coyote, or for that matter, even a skunk... this was blue quail cover at its finest.

We had just passed the near end of the mound when Cal began to point, excitedly, toward the center of the growth. He wasn't seeing tracks this time, he had spotted birds, there was no question about it. Our experience with hunting blues had taught us to watch beyond the far end of the mound. That was where the birds would most likely emerge from the cover, and that was the spot where we would fire into them and scatter the covey. The ground there was open and barren, and our visibility of the spot was unobscured... but there wasn't a bird in sight. If Cal had spotted birds, then they had spotted him, and they should be running away from him; but they weren't emerging from the south end of the cover. I looked into the mass of tangles near the center of the brush, and I could see movement deep within the mesquite. There were scores of blue quail, scurrying in every direction around the bases of the plants; it was blue quail pandemonium... a sight I had never seen before. Our approach had apparently been so stealthy that we were on top of the birds before they knew what had happened. They sensed their emergence from the cover at the south end would mean their undoing, and they had no idea how to react. Then, without warning, the covey exploded.

Lifting the butt of the pump to my left shoulder, I could hear and see the covey erupting into the air at the far end of the cover, but I could also see birds scurrying on the ground near the center of the mound. The mind of the hunter enters a slow-motion mode at times like these, and with fifty birds airborne, my concentration sharpened, and the rest of the world disappeared.

Stay calm¼ focus on a single bird. When the twelve gauge reported, its recoil rocked my upper body backwards, and the cleanly bagged blue quail dropped to the open hard pan floor, as the wing beats of the birds rising around him scattered the trailing feathers from the shot into swirling patterns. "Chuck-chuck." The sound of the pump mechanism of my shotgun reached my ears before the first bird hit the hard pan. The second target rose, somehow different from the rest, clearly in focus before a backdrop of a darkening cloud of quail rising behind him. Swing to the right... focus... now squeeze. The second round of sixes was airborne, and the second bird cleanly fell. "Chuck- chuck." The spent shell flew from the receiver of the twelve gauge, and pungent, blue smoke belched from its chamber.

It was now possible to see a distinct pattern emerging from the covey rise, the birds at the far end had broken first, and the covey was continuing to erupt, progressively rising toward our end of the mound. There were a hundred birds in the air as my second bird fell, and, like a tidal wave, growing ever closer, birds were still rising between Cal and me. Somewhere in a very distant place, I heard several barks from Cal's semi-automatic... but the thought was erased as quickly as it came... concentrate¼ one shell left.

There he was... just rising above the tops of the mesquite bushes... moving in slow motion. His wings were beating frantically, trying to carry him away from me, slightly off to the right side. Focus. He's levelling off, his direction is changing. Swing to the right. A warm, westerly breeze swept the right side of my face. My barrel joined the arc of the bird's flight, tracking and timing the speed of his movement. The wind has caught the cups of his wings... he's turning... this will be a passing shot. The shotgun barked, and the quail fell dead.

I was stunned for a moment. I could smell the sweet aroma of the burnt gunpowder, as the giant covey of birds sailed over the mesquite shrubs in the distance.

A triple... I got a triple.

"Mike! Where did they go?"

I turned to look at Cal, whose eyes were wide with excitement. "I got a triple."

"What?" Cal started walking toward me.

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