quail and turtles

stiles adkins and i, together with mr. bun marvel and earl "dead bird" tingle used to hunt quail west of fenwick island back in the 1960s...we were pretty good at it because one year we killed 454 - all walked up over two dogs.  now, the 2000s, there are housing developments where we hunted...needless to say, the quail are gone.  miss althea, mr. bun's wife, was a meticulous house keeper.  one day, bun's idiotic nephew reckoned he'd had a great duck shoot and arrived at the back door with a peach basket full of what he thought were carcasses.  in the kitchen he unveiled his bag...of crippled coots which skittered all over the floor.  "what d'you think bun?" asked jack.  "finest bunch of malyards i ever saw," replied bun.  "but you'd better kill 'em."  miss althea's comments are not recorded. 

later in life i graduated to hunting quail on horseback behind wide coursing pointers.  not recommended unless you have very strong thighs...getting on and off a horse twenty times a day will tax even the strongest.

finally we began hunting out of jeeps...behind wide coursing pointers.  easier on the thighs and you could cover more ground.  the shooting was good but i often hearked back to the old days with bun, dead bird, and stiles when one could walk out the back door and start hunting.

which reminds me; our newspaper ran an article the other day on the stunning event - one that had never happened in recorded history...that a turtle, what sort i don't recall, had come ashore on a local beach to lay her eggs.  bullshit.  we used to walk around them in the fall while surf fishing when we were kids - has nobody got any sense of history or the enduring pull of nature?