Hope you guys can point me in the right direction. I am from South Carolina. I was born and raised here. My father and I have finally made the decision to make a trip out your way to hunt birds. We plan to drive out with our own dogs. I have pointers that I run in NBHA trials. We want to keep costs as low as possible. We would like to hunt public land. I would be very thankful for any advice you all have. Birds out here are very scarce (except for woodcock season, which makes it worth owning pointing dogs in South Carolina). Any help would be great, as I have never been to Texas.
Thanks,
Ross p.

Ross you need to check into the Texas Parks and Wildlife web site for public land hunts http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/.
Look for WMA's. Hate to tell you this but last years drought has quail population way down. Good luck and post up after the hunt and let us know how you did. Also get your dogs snake broke and get them the rattle snake vaccine.

Day hunts/leases seem to be the cheapest if you can find them. Check locally in ads.

X2 on Ray B's advice.

Thanks for the input so far. I have been doing some research and seems like a down year for you guys would be an amazing year by our standards. What is the going rate for a day lease? I think we are going to base out of Alice, Texas and try to hit the WMA lands. Oh, does anyone know if I can get the snake vaccine out here and about how much it runs. Thanks again and keep the tips coming.

Ross

weather wise jan and feb are the best times to come . up until that time i would be watching the reports roll in on bird numbers and then make a decison as to where to go.

Where can I get access to the reports? Thanks

Ross

TPWD will have one in a few months and we share on here as well

Good luck to you. The last 3 or 4 years, the very small amount of public land in Texas has not been worth driving around the block to hunt, much less driving from South Carolina.

Day leases by and large are pretty worthless as well.

If you are gonna spend a week or so the best way to find birds is to get on a real quail lease and pay the price.

Sorry to say, at least recently, there is no way to keep your costs down and kill any birds. You can do one or the other. I would hate to drive 1500 miles to try to kill even half a mess of birds and not even do that on public land.

I'm sure your vet can get the Red Rocks vaccine (at least I think that's the name) The dog needs two shots one 30 days after the other. As far as cost, that depends on the Doc. I checked on leasehunter.com, the only wild bird day lease I saw advertised was $450 per day. That included food and lodging. Released bird leases are a little less expensive and your sure to get shots at liberated birds.

I don't know alot about it as I am not a bird hunter but maybe you can check out the Matador WMA? Good luck sir.

What's the best way to monitor rainfall in your area? I have tried to access totals for some areas, but it's hard to find historical rain data. I hear if you can map the rain, you can find birds. We are going to make the trip, even if birds are scarce. Grew up hearing that real bird hunters hunt Texas. Got to give it a try. Might open a can of worms here, but do any of you think quail hunting has become a 'rich mans sport'. Anyway, thanks for the tips, any names or numbers I might contact would still be very appreciated.

Ross

weather.com you can go back a month or two in a selected city and see what the rainfall was.

Any rain resources that will let me know the rainfall for past couple of years, so I can compare this years rainfall. If not, I guess you guys will keep posting on the board about the rain. Would anyone be up for leasing for a week only or a couple of days while we are out there? Thanks for the help thus far.

Ross

pm me as i might can help

Well, for the sake of quail hunting I'm going to enter my .02 worth. My family owns some acreage here in Coleman County. I've told this tale several times but for your benefit I will tell it again. The scarcity of quail is due to loss of habitat,fire ants and a drought that hopefully we're coming out of this year. At least the rain fall is coming at the convienent times. What a hunter has to consider is that it takes time to recover from devastating effects of what we've had to deal with. Quail hunting used to be our primary money maker on our place. Now we can hardly boast of anything in retrospect to the amount of birds on our place!

Our outfitter has had to travel and lease land far and wide from home base to try to keep his clients satisfied. Most of the hunting he did was in West Texas around Big Springs, Colorado City, and surrounding counties. Now, those numbers of quail are dwindling also from hunting pressure and a lot of the birds were blues/scaled quail. Hopefully this years moisture is going to give the birds a shot in the arm and populations will start to build. Until then, on our place, we will continue to hold back on taking birds at a slow rate.

Is quail hunting a rich mans sport? Personally, if I were a quail hunter and I used to be, I wouldn't be able to pay todays prices. Our outfitter charges a fair rate to his clients, which apparently CAN afford it, but to the average joe its out of reach and seems extravagent. It is probably the costliest hunting sport when compared to time in the field spent and the costs of apparell and gear, (dogs,trailers). We sell a quail hunt and it consist of a two day hunt, lodging and meals plus furnish dogs if needed and sometimes the travel can be hours away for around $800.00. Deer hunts consist of four day hunts or if you tag a deer before four days have past and the bucks start at around $1,500.00 unless you want a freak or management deer. My2cents

I think this is what you're looking for. Click the radio button for Archive>Month/Year and then zoom in on the location you're wanting to monitor. It has historical data back to 2005.

NOAA Precipitation Analysis