November 1999 Bird Hunting Trip

Reg and I took off a few days and went bird hunting up in Illinois at our friends John and Sue Caldwell's hunting preserve.  We, as usual, had a great time.  We duck and goose hunted in the mornings and quail, chukar and pheasant hunted in the afternoons.

The duck and goose hunting was pretty bad.  It has not been cold enough in Canada and the northern states to push the ducks and geese down into the Mississippi flyway.  The local duck and geese population has been hunted enough they are very leery about responding to our calls.  We harvested everything that came are way but that wasn't much.

The small bird hunting, on the other hand, was exceptional!  We harvested 50 quail, 4 pheasant and 2 chukar during our 3 day stay.  It was the best quail hunting that I've been associated with in 30 years!

The Break Hunting Preserve has put in place a new system for the quail hunting.  In August they put out several 50 bird coveys in strategic locations on the preserve.  They were placed in areas which offered them a greater chance for survival.  They used a something called "the call system".  You place a "call box" in the area you want the quail to live in.  This is basically a 5 gallon bucket hanging from a tree with a live quail in it (yes, it has food and water).  The live quail is the "caller".  The other quail respond to and come back to the call box.  A feeder is placed in the area so they have food.  After a week or so the quail are trained to live in the area and don't use the feeder anymore.  The call quail is released back into the covey.

We were treated to several 30 and 40 bird coveys during our hunt.  I haven't seen coveys like this since I was a kid!  They would fly every which way - and fast.  It was hard to pick a bird to harvest!

For more information on this system, check out The Break Hunting Preserve or Quails Unlimited.