A.V. Jones Recalls Memories
Of Good Quail Hunting Days

By Colleen Schreiber

ABILENE — More than 200 quail enthusiasts gathered at a recent symposium, "Preserving Texas' Quail Heritage into the 21st Century," to hear the latest statistics and quail research and to find ways to somehow perpetuate the quail population into the future.

Longtime avid quail man A.V. Jones, Albany, was a luncheon speaker who related his experiences and love for the outdoors and hunting, particularly quail hunting, through the eyes of a young boy growing up in the Rolling Plains.

"I live in what I consider to be the best quail hunting in the world," Jones told listeners. "It's by far the best place to hunt quail. You don't have to boot your dogs to protect them from prickly pear like you do in South Texas. You can get out here in the wide open spaces and really let your dogs roll. It is a great place to chase bobwhite quail."

Jones inherited his love of quail hunting from his father who grew up in eastern Oklahoma.

"There's a family story that's been passed around that says that my Uncle Dick and my dad starting hunting when they were so small that my Uncle Dick had to hold the front of the single-shot shotgun while my dad lined up a rabbit and pulled the trigger."

He also told the story about a time when Pretty Boy Floyd was in his prime, robbing banks and just wreaking havoc throughout Oklahoma. Some of his gangster friends made the mistake of robbing a bank in a small town on opening day of quail season.

"Everyone in town had his longtom slingshot 12-gauge on hand in case a covey of quail went across the road in his presence. The moral of the story is, don’t go into a little town on the first day of quail season and expect to rob a bank," Jones told the group.

His father went to the University of Oklahoma, where he completed a degree in geology. His first assignment upon graduation was in West Central Texas.

"My dad literally walked from Wichita Falls to Coleman, mapping every outcrop."

More interesting than the outcrops, Jones says, was the fact that under every bush he found a covey of quail. "He thought he had died and gone to heaven. He questioned whether it was a good place to look for oil or a good place to look for quail."

Jones chose to move to Albany. The speaker said he considered it a privilege to have had the opportunity to grow up hunting quail with his father because it further bonded them for life.

"We always had a bird dog," Jones recalled, "and I probably hunted more in the late 1930s and 40s than I have any other time in my life, and I hunt a lot still today."

Jones remembers some about the 1930s drouth and all of 1950s drouth, and he related the quail population as he remembers it.

"The '30s drouth was severe; the '50s was more severe. I’m sure that the quail population my dad observed in the 1920s went down in the early '30s. Into the late '30s I can testify that there were lots of quail.

"Many times I started for a movie on Saturday night and my mother was in the middle of the kitchen floor with a tub full of quail to clean. She’d be finishing about the time we got through with the midnight show," he told listeners.

"When I married Pat, I found out that all women are not created equally. Now it's something like, 'he who kills, cleans.'

"I won’t say how many was a good day back in those days," he continues. "Lots of times we were looking at 100 birds and not a lot of hunters. We had to feed the hungry people back then. The limit got exceeded a few times, I’m sure."

Through the war years, Jones says hunters never had to look hard to kick up a covey. In the late 1940s he became acquainted with A.S. Jackson, today considered by many as one of the great wildlife biologists. He was involved with a quail/turkey study on Watt Matthews' Lambshead Ranch near Albany.

"He did his research the old-fashioned way," Jones remarked. "That was before the day of the collar and all the other modern technology used today to track quail. I spent many hours following Mr. Jackson follow a covey of quail. I wish he was here to talk to you."

The drouth of the 1950s was so severe that the only place quail could be found, Jones recalled, was in the rights-of-way where there was still some grass. The pastures were barren, devoid of any cover at all, but somehow the quail population survived. In all that time, Jones said he never worried much about whether the quail hunting would get better again; he just took it for granted that it would. And after a time — for a time — he was right.

"From 1956-58 Mr. Jackson reported that just over 1000 quail were taken off 1280 acres, a two-section spot in Baylor County."

About this time, Jones became involved with a longtime Shackelford County ranch family. Brothers Bob and Bill Green had long been paying attention to their wildlife resource.

"There was a lot of chaining and clearing going on in the area," Jones said, "but Bob and Bill were always thinking about managing for their quail, and they had more quail than anyone else because of it. They set the stage in this area not only for good quail management but also good livestock management by not overgrazing."

The late 1950s, the speaker said, was the height of the peak. Through the 1960s there were peaks and valleys, but Jones said the peaks were a lot higher than they are today.

"It wasn't unusual to kick up 30 coveys in an afternoon," he recalled, "and we had sorry dogs back then compared to what we have now."

In the early 1970s the oil boom really hit Shackelford County and this allowed Jones himself to began acquiring land of his own. That's when he started paying more attention to real numbers and started keeping graphs of quail populations himself.

"In the 1970s it was up and down. Our city lake went flat dry in the late '70s but the quail population didn’t really seem to respond that way. We still had great quail numbers during that time. We were still finding the 30 coveys, but maybe we might have worked a little harder," he told the group.

His recordkeeping, however, did take on an ominous note when friends throughout the Southeast continued to talk about diminishing quail numbers.

"I kept hearing things like, 'we just don't have quail where we used to.' Still, I didn't worry; after all, I hadn’t had to worry about quail populations for 20 years. Still, it was an ominous call, one I think we were a little late in this area in receiving."

The 1980s was really more of the same, Jones said. A terribly tough winter, the winter of 1983-84, had a devastating affect on the quail population, but again they rallied. The latter years of the 1980s, he noted, were great.

"The fall of 1988 was as good a quail year as I can remember."

The '90s have been a roller coaster ride in terms of quail numbers.

"The bad news is that the roller coaster is on a downward spiral. We’ve been down for four years. Not historically low, but we're definitely down."

As for the future, the speaker first described the new breed of hunter and how they will impact quail hunting in the future.

"Used to, the farmers always had the best dogs. The farmer doesn’t hunt today because there isn’t any place for him to hunt. I would say Shackelford County is about 90 percent leased up.

"The hunter today," he continued, "is a sophisticated professional who has made his millions on Dell stock and he doesn’t really care what he spends on hunting as long as he gets the best. He understands conservation; that’s the good news, and he is very willing to cooperate with the rancher to improve the habitat."

He also noted changes in the operations themselves.

"Now many ranches don't run cattle at all and instead are spending millions of dollars a year on their hunting operations. Sorry to say, about half are hunting real quail in the morning and released birds in the afternoon just so their hunters get in more shooting."

Jones told listeners he believes the future will dictate that hunters go from shooting to hunting.

"It will make the game a little more fair and it will really conserve our birds," he remarked.

Jones said he expects to see an increase in "managed" hunting, something he sees already happening in the Rolling Plains in small doses.

"A good quail hunt will be based on the number of coveys, not body count. We try not to shoot more than two or three out of a covey rise because we will hunt that same covey 20 to 30 times a year," he explained.

Quail populations, he concluded, will continue to be under real stress for a variety of reasons. One significant reason, in his mind, is predators.

"Used to, in the 1940s and '50s, skunk hunting was the main occupation for high school boys. Hides brought $3 and a coon hide brought $5 and there was a $5 bounty for coyotes. Now they're not worth anything."

One advantage those in the Rolling Plains have over those in the Southeast is the number of contiguous big ranches still in operation.

"The northwest quarter of Shackelford County consists of 10,000 and 20,000 acre ranches. We have some real opportunity to manage the resource."

He applauded universities that are really focusing on the importance and the value of resource management and finding funds to further research the unknowns.

"What does the future hold? I don't really know. I do know that in large part the future depends on how we manage the resource. We all have to work together. If not, quail and quail enthusiasts in Oklahoma, South Texas and West Texas are likely doomed to the same fate as those in the Southeast.

"We hold the final answer of whether we’ll pass this heritage on or not," he concluded.