Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/116174
W e had begun four days earlier on a cool autumn morning in the hovering mist of sunrise, first dropping into the valley, then easing out across the broad and fertile plain that spread north and east from the high ridge atop which stood the opulent lodge and historic pre-Civil War home, timelessly overlooking 2,000 acres of prime upland habitat. Chuck and Arthur and I were to be the gunners, with Matt Behe and Dan Torgerson handling as fine a team of German shorthair pointers as I've ever seen. We hit the ground 500 yards south of where Chuck and I had glimpsed two big whitetail bucks at dusk the previous evening, and within ten minutes the dogs were on point. I hung back with the cameras as Arthur and Chuck moved in for the flush. The covey blew out fast and high, and Chuck dropped a left and then a right with his Fausti over/under as Arthur doubled with his vintage Winchester Model 21. We circled 150 yards back around to the hunting vehicle and moved a quarter-mile east. Again the dogs locked up on point within 200 yards, and this time two birds tumbled from opposite sides of the fleeing covey. An extended follow-up for singles produced three more quail, and Chuck even took a big, gaudy ringneck pheasant on the rise before we crossed the valley to the base of a wooded ridge bordering the long fields. This time Chuck took the cameras and I slipped my classic old A. Hill and Son 16-gauge side-by-side from its worn leather case. Choked IC and FULL, this prissy little early 1920s English vixen has been my gun of choice ever since my daughter and I happened across it at a gun show when she was teenager. She insisted on carrying it herself that day, open and empty and pointed toward the floor, looking askance at anyone who tried to talk us into selling it. If the truth be known, it really became her gun that day, and since we first brought it home it has accounted for hundreds of birds. And so it continued on this trip. We hunted the sprawling open valley, and we hunted the long sloping hardwoods above the fertile fields. We hunted the sides of the ridges that led up to the lodge, and at breakfast, lunch and dinner we savored our exquisitely prepared and presented meals. And now on this final afternoon with everyone else having left and the entire plantation ours, Dan and I and headed off the ridge with Shooter and Brute, our magnificently matched brace of German shorthairs, and out across the valley to the little creek with no name where we'd ended the morning. S P O R T I N G C 123 L A S S I Southern living at its finest . . . the author (left) and Sporting Classics Editor Chuck Wechsler enjoy their ride through the quail fields at Willow Oaks, following a keen-nosed team of German shorthairs. C S