Sweet Dreams

We’d waited 2-1/2 days. Actually, we’d waited almost two years. Since the puppies had been born, Patti Carter and I had talked about running the German shorthair littermates in a brace on quail. Now Tiza, the sleek black-and-white female, scampered down a row of stubbly Alabama pines and slid into a point. Scratch, the gangly brown-and-white male, snorted around an upturned disk of tree roots 20 yards to my left, filling his long houndy nose with the hope of feathers. The two had been running for about 10 minutes, slowly losing interest in each other and beginning to hunt independently.
    I whistled Scratch to come around. He loped toward me, and when he caught sight of Tiza holding staunch with her eyes boring into thick twisted grass at the base of a pine, he put on the brakes. And backed. He held there, honoring her point. My trip was made right then.
    It would be nice to say that Scratch held until we put up the birds and shot, but he didn’t. Moments passed while we admired the dogs, resisting the temptation to throw our guns down for a round of high-fives. Then Scratch started creeping until a firm “Whoa” changed his mind, and we got back to the business at hand.
    True to the nature of hunting coveys of strong-flying quail with young dogs, a few minutes later chaos erupted. The covey Tiza had located was big, at least 20 birds, and it wasn’t under the pine but rather a blowdown 15 feet ahead. Guns closed and barrels up, Patti and I moved cautiously forward. Two quail bolted from the tangle. Then five, then three, then four, then seven more, without giving us time to reload between volleys. Not one bird hit the ground.
    But that was no problem, because for the next 20 minutes we followed up and re-flushed various singles and pairs. Reloading, shouldering and shooting again.
    In between the two young dogs held steady, but their twitching ears and vibrating knees made it clear that steadiness was not their first choice. We worked the dispersed covey through a second line of trees. Again the speedy bobwhites outwitted our best attempts to flush them into the open. But persistence prevailed, and across a short field of green my 28-gauge  Guerini and Patti’s 28-gauge RBL finally accounted for three birds.
    We called up the dogs, knowing they wouldn’t have been able to mark the birds from their position, then sent them each on a “dead bird” fetch. Moments later the three birds were in hand. If dogs could grin, ours would have. Then again, Patti’s and my grins were big enough for the four of us.

Hunting quail at Dream Ranch, in Guntersville, Alabama, provides perfect opportunities for dog training and shooting practice. During our trip we were able to guess which coveys were truly wild, which had been released early and become pretty “wild,” and which were recent supplements. And other than one morning when the ground was very wet, none of the released birds did the “hop and flop,” which is frustrating to hunters and dogs alike. All of the birds flew strong. The wilder the covey, the more stealthy the dogs needed to be working into the scent cone.
    It was fascinating to watch both young shorthairs figure this out. Tiza would ratchet down her RPMs, lower her ground clearance and ease steadily forward. Scratch learned to cut his field-swallowing stride in half, looking like he was trying to tiptoe as well as his ribby 70-pound frame could allow.
    In the course of our four days in Alabama, our Northeastern grouse dogs had a remarkable variety of challenging bird scenarios thrown at them. Birds flushed in every direction, including straight toward them. Birds burrowed themselves in the grass. Birds circled around behind them. The dogs had to learn to work through sorghum, millet, Egyptian wheat, partridge pea and wintergreen. Some of the cover was low enough for us to see the dogs and for them to mark where the birds fell. Other cover was too tall, and we had watch for the brush to move or use locating beeps to find the dogs on point. 
    Dream Ranch owners Austin Ainsworth and his brother, Will, have developed six quail courses on the ranch’s 2,000 acres. The grounds are shared by a carefully bred herd of trophy bucks, whose racks average 200 points or more.
    To contain the deer, 10-foot-high fencing winds its way through the forest behind the lodge and around the quail fields. Passing through the tall gates in the modified hunting Jeeps brought to mind images from Jurassic Park. It wouldn’t have been terribly surprising to see a Brachiosaurus pop its head over the canopy of live oaks or hear the footfalls of a T-Rex deep in the woods. Still, we were no less astonished when we spotted a majestic 12-point buck, his antlers catching the early morning sun.
    On April 27 last year more than 200 tornadoes swept through Alabama. Dream Ranch lost nearly two miles of fencing, and much of the wooded acreage had trees uprooted or knocked down. When we visited, massive piles of brush awaited burning, and hundreds of downed trees still needed to be cleared. Fortunately, no one at the ranch had been hurt, and the lodge had gone untouched.
    The Ainsworth family bought the ranch in 2001. In 2007 they built the 14,000-square-foot lodge on the highest point of the ranch, offering spectacular views of Browns Valley and the Tennessee River. The building is made of massive white-pine logs, the floors of heart pine. Deep leather couches and rocking armchairs face a handsome stone fireplace with a large, inset flat-panel television. Separate areas offer guests a card room, pro shop and well-stocked bar. Downstairs the poolroom sports another TV, and the locker room has plenty of space for dirty boots, bird vests, gun cleaning and gear storage.
    The lodge is designed to give guests a variety of options for socializing or finding privacy inside and out: multiple decks, a hot tub, a launcher for shooting clay targets from the back patio, a screened porch with outside fireplace. The interior of the lodge is decorated with a stunning collection of African furnishings and trophy mounts taken by Austin, Will and their father, Bill.
    Dream Ranch has eight guest rooms and can accommodate groups up to 25. Each room has a private bath and a door leading outside onto a deck or porch. Parties of eight or more can have exclusive use of the lodge—a great draw for corporate groups, families and special occasions.
    Austin and lodge manager Melanie Moss go out of their way to make sure that guests have what they need and want. At cocktail hour one evening I mentioned that I’d recently started drinking Argentine Malbecs and how much I enjoyed them. By the time we sat down to dinner, Austin had returned from the wine store in Guntersville with three bottles of first-rate Malbecs. Some of the deer hunters in camp had told the chef about their childhood fondness for Spam. No snobbery at Dream Ranch, the hunters were served grilled Spam along with a heartfelt set of memories.
    Most important to us, Dream Ranch is dog friendly. Each of our rooms had an extra-large wire crate, and well-behaved dogs are allowed in the living room in the evening. Particularly pleasing is the size of the dog boxes built into the backs of the Jeeps. Scratch is a tall boy. At some of the other lodges we’ve visited, he hasn’t been able to fit in the rig boxes. The Dream Ranch Jeeps have two tall boxes in the back and a small box in the front, used most often by the guides’ English cockers.   How can you tell when a place is truly dog friendly? No one stares when you wrap chunks of leftover steak in a paper napkin and scurry back to your room.
    Nevertheless, hunters without dogs won’t be disappointed. The ranch has a kennel full of pointing and flushing dogs. Patti and I let Scratch and Tiza be disappointed one afternoon while our guide, Tracy Moss, ran an English setter named Al and Tracy’s cocker, Onnie. From the intensity of handling our own young dogs, it was a lovely change to watch the veteran pointing dog and high-spirited flusher demonstrate team tactics.
    Most of the time Tiza and Scratch ran solo. The morning before we attempted to run them as a brace, the quail taught us some serious lessons in evasive maneuvers. Birds flushed into trees. Birds flushed over fences. Birds skittered under grass too thick for humans to keep up. With all of these challenges, the shorthairs climbed their learning curves quickly. For dogs whose wild-bird contacts had been limited to grouse and woodcock, the chance to find, point and retrieve so many birds was an amazing training opportunity.
    Early December gave us temperatures topping out at 50, with cool mornings and evenings around 30. The wind was generally light, although had it been strong, the courses are big enough that they can be worked a variety of ways for the best scenting.
    The morning after our successful brace run, Patti dropped one of a pair of quail in a small pond. Without a thought, I sent Scratch on the retrieve, he being a versatile dog with a fair amount of water experience. His front feet eased quickly off the bank, but when his not-so-hirsute chest hit the water, he turned and gave me a look of disbelief. This is December. This is quail hunting. This is cold. He backed away from the pond.
    Three fetch commands later, I could see by his wandering eyes that he was thinking about the possibilities of fresh, dry quail farther out in the field. With another training opportunity offered, I looked for a rock to throw but couldn’t find one. Sacrificing an unused shell, I threw a 28-gauge load into the pond by the floating quail.
    The splash was enough to send Scratch airborne into the water. When he emerged, he gave me the canine expression equivalent of two thumbs up and tenderized the juicy wet bird an extra moment before releasing it into my hand. Twice more in the next hour quail went down into ponds, and Scratch dove for the retrieves without debate.
    The next morning Patti, several other hunters and I went duck hunting a short drive away at a property called Dream Duck. In the 5 am darkness we stumbled behind Austin, our guide, concentrating on the shallow beams from his headlamps and our small flashlights. We had no idea where we were or what the piece of water looked like. Not far down the path we stopped.
    The only sound was the whirring and whooshing of ducks landing and taking off and an occasional faint quacking. Austin pointed to a hole in the ground and told me it was my blind. I gave Scratch a look. Scratch looked back. No tied-up brush, no tacked-up camo cloth. Just the hole. It turns out the blinds were lengths of metal culvert pipe turned upright and set in the earth. After securing Scratch to a nearby tree (his blind manners had yet to be confirmed), I slid into the blind, which was roomy enough to relax in and shoot, with my arms above ground. Patti was taken farther around the pond to her blind.
    As legal shooting time approached, Austin cautioned us to wait and not jump on the ducks right away. The sky continued to lighten, and eventually we could see that we were at a six-acre pond ringed by culvert blinds and one wooden blind set in the middle. A small scattering of decoys floated out front.
    Then came the ducks.
    Minimal calling was needed, as the ducks simply wanted to be where we were. Flock after flock flew in from the North Sauty Wildlife Refuge for the better part of an hour and a half. Three of the hunters shot limits—mostly gadwalls, with a few Northern shovelers and wigeon mixed in. Patti took four ducks. Despite emptying an entire box of shells, I never hit a bird—proof that shooting quail and decoying waterfowl are two different games and that I need to hunt ducks more often.
In addition to Dream Duck, the Ainsworths also own and lease flooded grainfields bordering the Tennessee River and offer diver hunts on the river itself.
    Back at the lodge we settled into grilled cheese sandwiches, grilled peanut butter & jelly sandwiches and deep bowls of chicken-and-dumpling soup. We discussed which meal we’d liked best: breakfast’s eggs cooked in Texas toast and thick strips of bacon (Scratch’s favorite), the fried quail lunch, or the stuffed pork loin dinner. Then there was the shrimp and grits appetizer in the martini glass, the vodka-marinated beef filet wrapped in bacon with blue cheese on top, and the pecan pie or homemade cheesecake. (I think the shrimp and grits won.)
    On our last morning Patti and I began rehearsing the stories we’d tell when we returned home. We quickly realized, however, that describing Dream Ranch and how it sets itself apart from other Southern quail operations would be difficult. Even explaining all of the subtle things our young dogs had learned on the trip would be difficult. The photos would help, but most likely the best parts would stay the stuff of daydreams for the winter months ahead.

Author’s Note: For more information on Alabama quail hunting, contact Dream Ranch, 256-571-7355; www.dreamranch.org.

Nancy Anisfield, author of Reverse Points: Bird Dogs Reconsidered, is a field photographer for the Ruffed Grouse Society and a contributing editor for Versatile Hunting Dog. Her writing has appeared in a variety of sporting publications. Anisfield and her husband, Terry Wilson, live in Hinesburg, Vermont, with her two German shorthaired pointers and his three German wirehaired pointers. To see more of her work, visit www.anisfieldphotography.com.