It's a bird, it's a plane . . . It's a bird.
A little background: The man is 22 years old and has been hunting and fishing all his life. A real outdoorsman. And it just so happens that his job requires him to be out of doors, too, most of the daylight hours, and in rural Arkansas at that.
So he came to Sunday dinner the other night and described something he'd never seen before. It was a bird of some sort, but the color of a female mallard duck, and it flew close to the ground, a bit larger than a dove . . . .
What our young man described to mom and dad over dinner was . . . a quail.
It was his first such sighting.
Moral of the story: What a shame. Some of us can remember hunting quail in this state back in the good old days. And remember the warm summer evenings calling them up to the back porch. And the family story of the young hunter who came out of his boots one November morn when he flushed a covey under his stand. (Those who are old enough to know will remember that a flushed covey of quail sounds like a herd of buffalo--especially to a person daydreaming on a woodsy walk.)
We understand there are people at the Game and Fish Commission who are trying to find ways to bring back the quail, as they did for deer, turkey, elk and bears. Some of us can't wait. Already one generation has no idea what it's like to hear quail in the summer evenings. Let's not let another generation miss out, too.
Editorial on 08/25/2016