Viva la Blues!

David's lease is due south of Midland, and the number of blues there (given a generally "down" season) is gratifying. We hunted with David's father (Roy) in 2 ATVs.

The Minnesotans were just happy to be in west Texas; the temperature peaked out in the mid-70s . . . it was -20 degrees F when they departed St. Paul a day earlier.

The blues were characteristically wild, as one would expect, given the lateness of the season and the number of times they'd been hunted already . . . I suspect they shift into high gear whenever they hear an ATV approaching.

Four of us bagged 41 blues in about a 4-hour hunt.

I only carried along one dog: my 12-year old Setter "Doc." Doc has earned emeritus status and the dividends are two-fold: (1) she gets to go along on any hunt she wants to, and (2) she gets to ride in the front of the pickup. She's earned both.

At 14, she's along only for close-quarter support, but this limitation works fine given our style of hunting. She made 3 nice points and about 10 retrieves. Her points, once with a classic style, have since (in past month) relaxed a bit; I reckon she can't hold her tail up, resulting in more of a straight-line point. But, given the fact that she's a human equivalent of 98 years old, I'll be ecstatic if I'm still hunting blues when I'm 70!

Doc's retrieves are honorable -- soft-mouthed and straight to Daddy. I don't know how, but she has a tendency to carry a bird back with one wing of the bird covering her left eye, kind of like a pirate's patch.

About 10 years ago I was taking 3 Bobwhite Brigade youths on their first quail hunt. We hunted with several dogs that weekend. About mid-morning of our second day of hunting, one of the cadets, Mary Wills from Godley, made my day with her observation.

"I like to hunt with your dogs most Dr. Rollins." When I quizzed her why, she replied "because they're always smiling." It was Doc to whom her comments were directed.

I'll miss her someday.

But Doc was not the spotlight du jour -- that honor belonged to David. David is an 18-year old senior at Robert E. Lee High School in Midland. He has served several tours in the Bobwhite Brigade and is making quite a name for himself in west Texas quail circles (see a recent article about David in The Dallas Morning News at www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spt/outdoors/stories/111906dnspooutsider.245d450.html. Our reason for being there yesterday was to produce a television show and a feature article on David in Quail Forever's magazine.

The TV and magazine highlighted David's leadership in his recent establishment of a new Quail Forever chapter in Midland. Leadership? I think so. Gumption? Undoubtedly.

Doc and David share one adoration from me -- they're both easy to write about. And you can't help but feel like a doting father when around either. In dog parlance, David "looks good", both as an adjective and adverb; he rarely busts a covey, and he has eyes of passion for quail. This dog will hunt.

David inadvertently made me realize how I am aging. As we trudged up one hill where we'd seen some blues alight, three birds flushed in front of David and me. His Ruger beat mine by a good half-second . . . and I wound up shooting a dead bird. It's hard to compete with the motor skills of a teenager!

Three years ago at the Bobwhite Brigade, I implemented a last-minute change in my vespers program "Suzie's 12-Point Plan for Success." The posthumous tribute to my old Setter, and the lessons in life I learned from her, are standard issue at all Bobwhite Brigade camps. But on this particular night, with about 2 hours notice, I asked my daughter Krissa, student worker Mandy Currie, and David Harrison if they would do the honors of giving the presentation. They reluctantly agreed--I don't think any of them knew how to turn me down.

They did a fine job, speaking with reverence where reverence was appropriate. I was proud of them. But after camp adourned the next day, my daughter Krissa shared with the "the rest of the story." She said as she passed by the kitchen area at Krooked River Lodge immediately after the vespers program, she noticed David over in the corner weeping. When Krissa asked wat was wrong, David looked up with reddened eyes and lamented to her "I just don't think we did Suzie justice."

How can you not love a kid like that?

As the day wound down, we took advantage of the golden sunlight to conduct interviews. First they interviewed David, then his father, and finally me. I didn't listen to the previous interviews, but when it was my time, the show host (Ron Sherar) told me David would like to have my job someday, and what did I have to say about that.

I told him I would be flattered if the successor of my position was David Harrison. When I look into David's green eyes, I see a passion and commitment that would sustain what I set as a professional goal back in January 1991. I had just finished reading about the demise of bobwhites in the Southeast, and of my colleague Dr. Lenny Brennan's fatalistic prediction that bobwhites would reach unhuntable numbers in the Southeast by 2005. I remember making a pact with a yearling Setter (Suzie) that if quail were going to suffer the same fate in West Texas, it wasn't going to be without a fight.

That battle still wages. And I sense David will continue to lead the charge.