This is the story of our Labrador Missy's first Kansas quail. It has been very frustrating to get our 10 month old black labrador Missy started on birds. A November trip to Kansas yielded a daily, birdless walk where I found no birds and Missy did nothing noteworthy to make birds appear. Only one walk produced a single rooster that flushed at my daughter's feet with Missy out of the picture. Things improved on our December trip. I was finding quail on every walk, but Missy was always in the bushes, eating cowpies, or going left as I flushed birds right. Three covey flushes. Zero bird contacts for Missy. Until the fourth walk... A covey flushed wild in the distance. I marked them down and eased that way always keeping Missy right in front of me. The covey flushed in between Missy and I... close! She yelped like she had bumped into an electric fence and took off running. The covey flushed away from her and to my right. I killed one bird on my second shot. Missy came running as I worked to locate the downed bird and made the retrieve, chasing down the fluttering cripple in a cut corn field. My two daughter's, who were just behind us, witnessed it all. They said, "Daddy. Missy blood

-hounded those quail." 😂 Yeah. Something like that.