In just little over a week, the 2023-2024 quail hunting season begins statewide. Opening date to hunt the popular bobwhite is Saturday, Nov. 11. The season runs through Feb. 15, 2024.
From the reports I’ve seen and heard, the quail numbers are up over a year ago.
That’s what the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife is indicating.
As I’ve mentioned previously, I started hunting bobwhites when I was about 12 years old. My dad had gotten me a .410 gauge bolt action shotgun and I used it.
My first quail hunt was with my dad, his good friend Frank Shepard and his son Curtis who was a little younger than I was. It was down near Slaughterville, a community I live much closer to today than I did while growing up in the Village, an Oklahoma City suburb.
Never will I forget the first covey of quail that got up and how the sound startled me.
Until about 2016-2017, I didn’t miss hunting quail at least some time during the season. We had to put our little pointer Sassy to sleep in January of 2016 and we haven’t had a bird dog since.
I hunted quail regularly for nearly 60 years. But the population has been dwindling since the last time I hunted them.
Think I and a good friend Steve Buoy are going to try some quail hunting this season.
We’re also planning to get out and hunt turkey. The fall gun season on turkey opens Saturday, Nov. 4, and runs through Friday, Nov. 17, day before the 16-day statewide gun deer season opens.
I didn’t start hunting gobblers until 1985 when I was getting close to 40 years old.
But we’ve hunted them pretty regularly since then, though I haven’t tried to harvest one since November of 2020 when I bagged a gobbler, as did Steve.
Back on quail, the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation says its August roadside quail survey shows the statewide index is up 45.8 percent from 2022. That’s encouraging, and another reason I want to get in the woods and give it a try.
I still don’t have a bird dog and there aren’t any plans to get one at this juncture but Steve and I have hunted them with some success without having dogs.
Vividly do I remember a hunt in 2003 he and I had where we moved well over a dozen coveys and bagged our limit of birds.
Not being in the field to hunt turkey or quail in three years just couldn’t be helped. There were higher priorities going on in my life and in that of my wife Pat but that is okay.
I look forward to being in the woods once again.