Palouse Outdoors:Valley Quail Chronicles

Naked blackberry brambles nagged at faded green double-front Carhartt pants as I crashed through the tangle. Invasive vines cloaked a downed Russian olive in striated hummocks and grabbed at my boots. English hawthorn spikes stung my cheeks.

"The things I do to push birds to friends," I mumbled.

Finn stood stone-still at the far edge of the tangle, awaiting the flush. She had pegged the covey where the Russian olive poked into the edge of the field and held tight for several minutes. Cole stood at her right rear flank, his sleek over/under readied for action. A hint of Finn's worn orange vest flashed through micro-openings in the wicker-like thicket as I circled her, attempting to flush the covey.

The tangle suddenly shook, and vines clattered as the covey erupted with quail spurting in all directions. Thrusting the "Red Label" to my shoulder, I sighted over the bead through the narrowest of gaps, but even the quickest of reflexes could not pull off a shot as the gray streaks flashed by. Two shots rang out as Cole swung on the stragglers.

"Well?" I called out questioningly.

"Well, what?" Cole returned sarcastically, as if unsure of my question.

Busting free of the twisted, crackling mess, I spied Cole across the field, searching carefully. As I approached, he bent to retrieve a glorious male he had deposited into the golden grasses beneath a Russian olive. We admired the pewter beauty with its dancing black topknot; how its caramel breast feathers, coal-black bib, and marshmallow streaks all blended flawlessly with the dark, overhanging olive branches and varied beige hues of dried weeds and senescent leaves.

"I love these little guys," Cole said, rolling the handsome prize in his hands.

"Oh, for sure. There's nothing like chasing covey birds," I said.

"Most of the covey went down there," Cole said with an arm raised toward the back of the field.

Two collar beeps summoned Finn for a check-in, and the three of us started after the covey. More blackberry and Russian olive enclosed a small swale at the field's end with grass paths splitting around it. The swale ran around the toe of a steep slope that was enshrouded in brittle Italian rye stems. A riparian patch appeared mid-slope, where canary-yellow chokecherry leaves shimmered in the light breeze, and cotton tufts of showy milkweed seeds bulged from the open seed pods. The rye petered out at a basalt cliff face at the top of the slope, which dropped to the edge of the Snake River.

"Should we split around this swale?" Cole asked.

"Yeah, that makes the most sense," I said. "That way, one of us should wind up with a shot."

Cole moved right toward a trail through the Russian olives while Finn and I went left up the slope and around a blackberry hedge. Finn followed the edge carefully, and when the mound lessened into thorny tendrils creeping through the grasses, she turned into the thick of it and stopped cold. Her body was rigid yet calm and confident, tail straight, and head high. Her perked ears angled slightly forward, like satellite dishes cupping around the scent cone.

"Birds. Right here," I called to Cole, pointing to Finn standing directly before me. "Move up to the opening past the trees."

Once Cole had moved into position, I angled into the blackberries ahead of Finn, as if seeking the point where a rainbow touched down. A single male bombed from the cover to my right. Within one full second, my Red Label barked and caught him squarely as he arched left-to-right along the swale. My movement was so swift and crisp that the orchestration of it seemed beyond my physical capabilities.

The covey rise was electric with three staggered flushes. Quail climbed and agilely fell over the top of the blackberry hedge as they dispersed through the Russian olive thicket. Cole fired twice without consequence, and I failed to draw another bead. I stood motionless, mesmerized by the dodgy flight of magical little birds behaving more like golden snitches from a Harry Potter film than living, breathing wildfowl.

"Did you get one?" Cole asked.

"Yeah, I dropped the first bird that got up – a little male."

I had nearly taken a step toward recovering the quail when Finn circled below along the swale edge, caught the scent cone, and turned in on point.

"Dead bird, Finn. Get it," I called to her.

None of my setters are retrieving dogs, but to my astonishment, Finn gently grabbed the quail, trotted proudly up the hill, and dropped it by my left foot – a deliberate retrieve for the first time. She picked up the bird again, held it, and dropped it on command, as if she had done it routinely for the past 11 years. Never mind that she followed up to secure my first bird of the day, which I had only wounded in head-high sagebrush.

Cole and I set out for the truck, following paths that flanked and meandered through nearly a mile more of prime quail thickets. Finn continued to stick points, but the birds made fools of us.

We reminisced about the points, flushes, and shooting skills - both good and bad - as I brushed houndstongue burs from Finn's soft coat. At 11 years old and having just concluded a three-hour hunt, she was no worse for wear and ready for round two. She had tallied over a dozen points, resulting in coveys large and small and staggered flushes, affording Cole and me ample opportunity to take a limit each. But the bag cannot measure the significance of a hunt, and certainly not the meager three quail out of hundreds that we brought down this morning.

The hunt is about the experience, the singular moments, time with friends and family, the poetry of a covey rise against the seafoam sagebrush and fluttering golden alder leaves and grasses, the uncanny or unexpected display of skills, and the intimacy we share with the landscape that defines the hunt. This was one for the books.