On the last week of the New Mexico scaled quail season my friend Russ Miller, his son Nick and I headed back to southern New Mexico. Russ and I shot enough birds on our first trip a month earlier for me to know that I just needed to get into one more covey in a day, to have a chance to get Bo a state daily bag limit Story Band for scaled quail.
On a tip from a fellow bird hunter we drove deeper into the state and found a more birds than up north, and after a few morning hours hustling after Bo, I was pretty certain that 15 scalies in one day would be doable.
When a guy's shooting that many birds in a day it's tough to recall every shot with enough clarity and color to make the list interesting, but it sure is fun!
Bo's 14th and 15th birds were memorable in that I had missed a gimme single with both barrels just before and Nick proceded to chide me as if I had never hit a scaled quail. Soon Bo flushed a pair from a desert clump that I couldn't begin to identify, and I hit each bird hard on a clean left right double. When Bo dropped the right bird in my hand, I called Nick over to show him that I had shot the head clean off the bird, but as he approached, Bo brought the left bird back with only a small part of it's head remaining. That's the way to finish a great day and collect a limit Story Band for a black Lab in New Mexico!