Mavrick10_2000
New member
OK, here is the story & results... (Very long)
Friday
Leave my buddy's place at 11:45 PM and reach our hunting area by 3AM. Setup Camp, tent, kitchen area, fire pit, etc....now 4:25 AM. We stare around quicly at the stars in the sky and see about 10 meteor's burning up before we hurry and jump into sleeping bag for about 1 hour sleep. 5:30 AM Alarm goes off, get up for 1 quick cup of coffee and a breakfast bar and into the truck to our first coyote stand. We hear coyotes howling everywhere around us.
6:15 AM: Walking to the stand we flush a nice covey of quail 12-15 birds. Can't wait until tomorrow.
We're setup with Foxpro and Jack in the box ready to be quiet for about another 20 or so minutes. Man there's ton's of coyote sign (tracks and scat). I set Marty up 25 yards away from the JITB with Rem 870 & #4 buck, and me about 45 yards away facing the other direction stuffed into a sage bush hill over looking a wheat field
and the road. Start calling with the Screamin' Demon....crap forgot to take out my dip and I can barely make a reconizable sound. Drop out the nasty dip wait a few mins and start calling softly. Nothing seen on this stand. Even after about 25 mins. There might have been a distant taker, but neither of us saw anything or had a response. Time to move closer to the treeline and river.
9AM: Stand 2: Nothing there with Rabbit from Screamin' Demon or Timbertoe's call. (That we could see) Call's sounded awesome. Time to move to next stand.
10:00AM Stand 3: River Bank up against some heavy timber thickets with Sandhills and sage brush to our backs. Tried the Foxpro rabbit distress with varying volume off and on but nothing except hawks and crows hanging out admiring the JITB. Still pretty cool sight to draw them in. Saw two doe slip by at about 75 yards.
Marty's setup before nestling into the cedar at Stand #3 by the river.
Well eventually we have no visible or audible luck. It get's pretty dang warm 80 degrees by 11AM. That's just wrong. So we start to walk out the easiest way, now that we're about 3 miles from the truck. I spot several turkey at the edge of a wheat field and our quail honey hole.
We drop out packs and belly crawl to the edge of the brush for a better look, we picked up about 75 goat heads each along the way, man those things hurt. 15 Turkey all mature, but no Tom's at about 125 yards. We decide to pass and ultimately they come within about 25 yards and we let them walk by. Great morning overall.
Late Lunch, turkey and cheese sandwiches with some water, gatorade and chips. Take a nap for about 2 hours because then tent seemed like it was about 125 degrees inside, unseasonably hot. For dinner, Venison Chili, and we bake cornbread on the coleman stove awesome. Start a fire at dark and sit around relaxing, no evening stands. In the sleeping bag by 7:30 almost falling asleep by the campfire. Put out the fire water, and dirt set the alarm for 5:30AM for the quail opener.
Saturday
Up at 5:30 AM, defintely a change not freezing in the morning, feels like 55-60 degrees. A quick oatmeal and coffee breakfast and we drive to the gate to start our hunt. There were 5 other trucks there with dogs, Missouri, Alabama (hey you have quail at home /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif) and Tennessee. We head out at 7AM. For the 1/2 mile walk in, not one quail was heard whistling. At sunrise we hit our normal spots, with Zero birds flushing. We kept on walking from sage brush and sand plum thicket cover over to the crop fields. Finally at 8:30 we flushed our first covey (15-20 birds), hitting 2 and retrieving two birds. How we wished Penny (Dog) was trained to point instead of only retrieve. Take our birds from Penny and move to where the covey landed and we hit 3 more. 1 was obviously a runner and lost in the sage and buffalo grass, Marty's bird just blown apart with only about 1 sq. in of breast left....food for the coyotes, and mine in my bag. We walk the crops next and end up pushing two more covey for the morning and taking in 8 more birds. Decent but not better than last year. Much more work this year. We decide to head to another area for the afternoon hunt out into the panhandle of Oklahoma.
3:30PM we arrive in Beaver, OK for the first time. At the gate of the WMA we realize we have 1 hour to hunt left. And sure enough quail are crossing the road in front of us. We don't want to spook them but let them cross the road until we realize that the road is private property. We jump out load up and send Penny to the fencline. She jumps about 10 that flush to our huntable side and we take 3 birds each....sweet my first triple - all recovered. Unfortunately about 40 other birds flush at our shots on the private property. Oh well, this place seems loaded with birds and we move on. Into the Milo field and we keep flushing more birds ultimately with 10 birds in the bag, only one limit. To top it off we flushed 3 hens and 2 rooster pheasant, very cool. We decide we're driving the extra 70 miles from Camp the rest of our days to hunt quail.
For the Evening we wuss out and eat some burgers at Braum's. Another beautiful evening by the campfire looking at the stars and seeing meteor's and picking every type of sticker known to man out of Penny's hair. Eventually we decide to cut some of her Hackle hair to reduce the sticker pickup factor, works well. I swear every type of sticker bush on the planet is here. I've got two plum thicket Spines in my shin that went completely through my brush pants and can't be removed with tweezers, put some alcohol on it and call it good rather than cutting open my shin to yank em out, although I tried with my pocket knife. Oh well it only feels like a bruise.
Sunday Morning: Up at 5:30, make some bacon, egg and toast for a bacon, egg cheese breakfast sandwiches with some coffee. It's a little cooler today, hopefully it doesn't get much warmer/ Drive the 70 miles to Beaver and decide to hit the other parts of the WMA. Good call...pushing plum thickets, sage and the other hills with buffalo grass and oats. We both limit for the day after loosing 7 birds, which were runners. Dang it I hate that, but it makes the coyotes, bobcats and owls fatter so that's fine. We flushed 7 rooster pheasant just before reaching the truck in the afternoon, dang season dates are Dec 1 for pheasant. No coyote stands for the evening, we're beat, walked about 7.5 miles of thick brush today. Need to eat dinner and sleep early for another 5:30 am wake up call, but I decide to take the rabbit I shot and JITB out along side the road after dark, the moon is getting close to full. I loaded my shotgun with #4 buck and walked about a mile and setup for about 90 minutes. I had multiple replies to my calls, both distress and howls, challenges. But they all held back. I left them the rabbit as a snack.
Here are pics of Sunday.
Penny, the birds and some Coyote Bait for the morning.
Marty, Me and Penny with our takings for the day.
Monday: Holy Crap it's cold. Check in the truck and it's only 28 degree's when we wake up. Not as bad two years ago in Feb, when it was -10 with 6 in. of snow, but still chilly. Same as the other days, early start, same breakfast, plus some little Debbie's brownies and coffee. I make sure to have some emergency toilet paper with me this morning /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-006.gif End's up being a good call, enough said.
Today was some hard hunting, the birds have been pushed since Saturday morning and they're holding really tight. We eventually end up finding the birds scattered about.
We only fell short of our max by 7 birds (32 total)so that's fine by me. We saw plenty of big deer, in the field and unfortunately by the side of the road, quail and pheasant. Overall a great hunt, no predators to show for it, but the calls when used without chew worked very well.
As a bonus, here is a picture of the Town Mascot statue for the annual Cow Chip throwing contest in Beaver, OK..
Sorry I didn't get more pictures of the terrain, but it was awesome. I think I'm going to be taking the .300 Win Mag up there for deer over the next few weeks. I can actually get a long shot on deer up there.
Friday
Leave my buddy's place at 11:45 PM and reach our hunting area by 3AM. Setup Camp, tent, kitchen area, fire pit, etc....now 4:25 AM. We stare around quicly at the stars in the sky and see about 10 meteor's burning up before we hurry and jump into sleeping bag for about 1 hour sleep. 5:30 AM Alarm goes off, get up for 1 quick cup of coffee and a breakfast bar and into the truck to our first coyote stand. We hear coyotes howling everywhere around us.
6:15 AM: Walking to the stand we flush a nice covey of quail 12-15 birds. Can't wait until tomorrow.
We're setup with Foxpro and Jack in the box ready to be quiet for about another 20 or so minutes. Man there's ton's of coyote sign (tracks and scat). I set Marty up 25 yards away from the JITB with Rem 870 & #4 buck, and me about 45 yards away facing the other direction stuffed into a sage bush hill over looking a wheat field
and the road. Start calling with the Screamin' Demon....crap forgot to take out my dip and I can barely make a reconizable sound. Drop out the nasty dip wait a few mins and start calling softly. Nothing seen on this stand. Even after about 25 mins. There might have been a distant taker, but neither of us saw anything or had a response. Time to move closer to the treeline and river.
9AM: Stand 2: Nothing there with Rabbit from Screamin' Demon or Timbertoe's call. (That we could see) Call's sounded awesome. Time to move to next stand.
10:00AM Stand 3: River Bank up against some heavy timber thickets with Sandhills and sage brush to our backs. Tried the Foxpro rabbit distress with varying volume off and on but nothing except hawks and crows hanging out admiring the JITB. Still pretty cool sight to draw them in. Saw two doe slip by at about 75 yards.
Marty's setup before nestling into the cedar at Stand #3 by the river.
Well eventually we have no visible or audible luck. It get's pretty dang warm 80 degrees by 11AM. That's just wrong. So we start to walk out the easiest way, now that we're about 3 miles from the truck. I spot several turkey at the edge of a wheat field and our quail honey hole.
We drop out packs and belly crawl to the edge of the brush for a better look, we picked up about 75 goat heads each along the way, man those things hurt. 15 Turkey all mature, but no Tom's at about 125 yards. We decide to pass and ultimately they come within about 25 yards and we let them walk by. Great morning overall.
Late Lunch, turkey and cheese sandwiches with some water, gatorade and chips. Take a nap for about 2 hours because then tent seemed like it was about 125 degrees inside, unseasonably hot. For dinner, Venison Chili, and we bake cornbread on the coleman stove awesome. Start a fire at dark and sit around relaxing, no evening stands. In the sleeping bag by 7:30 almost falling asleep by the campfire. Put out the fire water, and dirt set the alarm for 5:30AM for the quail opener.
Saturday
Up at 5:30 AM, defintely a change not freezing in the morning, feels like 55-60 degrees. A quick oatmeal and coffee breakfast and we drive to the gate to start our hunt. There were 5 other trucks there with dogs, Missouri, Alabama (hey you have quail at home /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif) and Tennessee. We head out at 7AM. For the 1/2 mile walk in, not one quail was heard whistling. At sunrise we hit our normal spots, with Zero birds flushing. We kept on walking from sage brush and sand plum thicket cover over to the crop fields. Finally at 8:30 we flushed our first covey (15-20 birds), hitting 2 and retrieving two birds. How we wished Penny (Dog) was trained to point instead of only retrieve. Take our birds from Penny and move to where the covey landed and we hit 3 more. 1 was obviously a runner and lost in the sage and buffalo grass, Marty's bird just blown apart with only about 1 sq. in of breast left....food for the coyotes, and mine in my bag. We walk the crops next and end up pushing two more covey for the morning and taking in 8 more birds. Decent but not better than last year. Much more work this year. We decide to head to another area for the afternoon hunt out into the panhandle of Oklahoma.
3:30PM we arrive in Beaver, OK for the first time. At the gate of the WMA we realize we have 1 hour to hunt left. And sure enough quail are crossing the road in front of us. We don't want to spook them but let them cross the road until we realize that the road is private property. We jump out load up and send Penny to the fencline. She jumps about 10 that flush to our huntable side and we take 3 birds each....sweet my first triple - all recovered. Unfortunately about 40 other birds flush at our shots on the private property. Oh well, this place seems loaded with birds and we move on. Into the Milo field and we keep flushing more birds ultimately with 10 birds in the bag, only one limit. To top it off we flushed 3 hens and 2 rooster pheasant, very cool. We decide we're driving the extra 70 miles from Camp the rest of our days to hunt quail.
For the Evening we wuss out and eat some burgers at Braum's. Another beautiful evening by the campfire looking at the stars and seeing meteor's and picking every type of sticker known to man out of Penny's hair. Eventually we decide to cut some of her Hackle hair to reduce the sticker pickup factor, works well. I swear every type of sticker bush on the planet is here. I've got two plum thicket Spines in my shin that went completely through my brush pants and can't be removed with tweezers, put some alcohol on it and call it good rather than cutting open my shin to yank em out, although I tried with my pocket knife. Oh well it only feels like a bruise.
Sunday Morning: Up at 5:30, make some bacon, egg and toast for a bacon, egg cheese breakfast sandwiches with some coffee. It's a little cooler today, hopefully it doesn't get much warmer/ Drive the 70 miles to Beaver and decide to hit the other parts of the WMA. Good call...pushing plum thickets, sage and the other hills with buffalo grass and oats. We both limit for the day after loosing 7 birds, which were runners. Dang it I hate that, but it makes the coyotes, bobcats and owls fatter so that's fine. We flushed 7 rooster pheasant just before reaching the truck in the afternoon, dang season dates are Dec 1 for pheasant. No coyote stands for the evening, we're beat, walked about 7.5 miles of thick brush today. Need to eat dinner and sleep early for another 5:30 am wake up call, but I decide to take the rabbit I shot and JITB out along side the road after dark, the moon is getting close to full. I loaded my shotgun with #4 buck and walked about a mile and setup for about 90 minutes. I had multiple replies to my calls, both distress and howls, challenges. But they all held back. I left them the rabbit as a snack.
Here are pics of Sunday.
Penny, the birds and some Coyote Bait for the morning.
Marty, Me and Penny with our takings for the day.
Monday: Holy Crap it's cold. Check in the truck and it's only 28 degree's when we wake up. Not as bad two years ago in Feb, when it was -10 with 6 in. of snow, but still chilly. Same as the other days, early start, same breakfast, plus some little Debbie's brownies and coffee. I make sure to have some emergency toilet paper with me this morning /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-006.gif End's up being a good call, enough said.
Today was some hard hunting, the birds have been pushed since Saturday morning and they're holding really tight. We eventually end up finding the birds scattered about.
We only fell short of our max by 7 birds (32 total)so that's fine by me. We saw plenty of big deer, in the field and unfortunately by the side of the road, quail and pheasant. Overall a great hunt, no predators to show for it, but the calls when used without chew worked very well.
As a bonus, here is a picture of the Town Mascot statue for the annual Cow Chip throwing contest in Beaver, OK..
Sorry I didn't get more pictures of the terrain, but it was awesome. I think I'm going to be taking the .300 Win Mag up there for deer over the next few weeks. I can actually get a long shot on deer up there.