Cimarron this weekend?

BirdGuy said:
Looking for some advice from somebody that has targeted scaled quail more than 0 times like myself. Would this be considered suitable habitat or is it lacking key plants such as "sandsage, prickly pear, tree cactus, cholla, skunkbush sumac, fourwing saltbush, wild plum, soapweed, and littleleaf."? Trying to determine if its worth walking habitat like this or if we should target areas with a little more shrub brush type stuff.


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Yes Scalies would like that -- I used to bump them from time to time near Garden City when i lived there in early 2000s -- I think they often ran too much on me for me to figure out how to get them up. But I dont have enough experience with them. I could see the tracks in the middle of the sand hills but they likely outran me and the setter I had then -- she liked pheasants better anyways so we normally got more of those up - biggest "trophies" to me were the old birds we could chase down in the middle of a pasture like that.
 
Should there be any concern with rattlers on a 55 degree day in January? Looks like Hugoton and Guymon both have vet clinics.
 
BirdGuy said:
Should there be any concern with rattlers on a 55 degree day in January? Looks like Hugoton and Guymon both have vet clinics.
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I would keep my eyes open just in case. When I went on a 50 degree day last weekend of the season a couple years ago there were snake tracks in the two tracks..
 
Our hunt near Syracuse did not go very well. 2 of us killed 2 roosters & 2 quail. The Ark river bottoms held a lot of quail, but after both gsps got quilled we quit hunting in the willows on the river banks & only saw 1 more covey. 3 days, but we did not hunt real hard. Less than half a day each day.
 
Logged a ton of miles out there over a two day period and didn't see any sign of them. Even had snow the second day to help locate tracks. Still had a solid time regardless, that's some cool country out that way.
 
BirdGuy said:
Should there be any concern with rattlers on a 55 degree day in January? Looks like Hugoton and Guymon both have vet clinics.
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Yes -- but only if you're near their holes where they are hibernating --

In 2010 i had a setter get bit on a 45 or 50 degree day -- it was sunny but the winds were blowing 10-15 from the n so felt bitter -- also the prior night got down near 15 degrees.

Anyways we were in an old prairie dog town that had 2ft tall grass all over due to them being poisoned out -- pheasants liked to roost there so we hunted it often. I saw my dog being inquisitive and half point, wag her tail and stick her head down repeatedly to check something out then jump back -- never thought anything of it until we got back to the truck -- she had a stream of coagulated blood on top of her head where the snake bit her -- we thought she was jabbed by a yucca -- anyways we messed with the puncture area to see if anything would come out not knowing what it was and apparently we spread the venom around -- about 15 mins later at the next spot she was swollen up like a balloon and lethargic -- She came out fine but can't help but think that shortened her life a bit -- she was 10 at the time.

Later learned they never truly hibernate I believe -- on warm or sunny days they can come out and sun themselves -- where this snake would have been would have felt nice -- grass was perfect wind break and the sun felt good with no wind blowing on you.
 
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