Sunday marked the beginning of a new year, 2023.
In reflecting on what some New Year’s Days used to be like when I growing up, I began to think about some of those when I was a teenager.
From the time I was around 13 or so, and we had a bird dog, dad and I spent a lot of them quail hunting. Even up through the first couple of years of college and some when I was a little older, we hunted quail on the first day of the year, unless the weather prevented us from going.
The weather had to be pretty bad to keep us from going I assure you.
When dad’s first Brittany, Banjo, was young, if we could get there we went no matter how cold it might be. Sunshne, snow, wind or not, we were going.
We did a lot of our hunting on New Year’s on my late cousin’s property north of Calumet that had quite a few quail on it. Even though we hunted New Year’s, we’d generally finish up in time to get back in and watch a football bowl game or two.
Usually, as dad got a little older, we didn’t go quite as early on New Year’s. Generally, it was just he and I who went hunting on that day.
One reason dad wanted to hunt New Year’s was because it happened to be a holiday. For the longest time in Oklahoma, quail hunting opened on Nov. 20 each year and it ended Jan. 15. But the allowed hunting days were only Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and holidays.
We hunted maybe a half-day on Thanksgiving, never on Christmas and most of New Years’s Day.
Gradually that changed where we could hunt all but a couple of days a week, and eventually it became where we could enjoy any day. It still opened on Nov. 20 but the end of the season was extended to Feb. 1.
Now it begins the second Saturday of November and runs through Feb. 15. If dad were alive today, he would be 99. I’m reasonably sure too old to hunt. But I wonder what he would think about all the changes.
I really liked my New Year’s Day hunts with dad. Probably because I knew it would be time for just the two of us to go out in the woods and spend time with one another and enjoy being together.