It so happened that a couple of quail flew across the road in front of me this morning, the first I have seen in a couple of years. I began bird hunting in the mid '60s with my Dad and hunted them until the mid '90s when around here the numbers fell off abruptly to the point where it wasn't worth the effort to hunt them; even if I had been able to find some, I couldn't in good conscience shoot any with the population down so much. I was between dogs at that time and couldn't see that there was enough of a population to train a pup on, much less hunt for.
Like some others have said, it was my passion. I made some fairly serious life decisions on the assumption that there'd always be birds and I'd always be a bird hunter. There has been an empty spot in my life for the last 25 plus years since I last hunted them. Most disappointing was the fact that I never got the chance to take my sons quail hunting. Had hoped/assumed that there would be a fourth generation quail hunter in our family, but it was not to be.
About a hundred years ago, my grandfather once shot 75 wild quail one day in the Piedmont of NC. Hard to believe how much things have changed.
