When I was a teenager going to Denison High School, there was a day back in the 1980s when I pulled into the parking area of the old Katy Golf Course, ready to play a round not far from the nearby MKT train tracks that the northern Grayson County community is famous for. While memories can get fuzzy over time, I distinctly remember that when I parked near the nine-hole Crawford Street course, a few quail flushed from the nearby brush, Gentleman Bob’s living right in the middle of D-Town. While I never had that experience again, I would occasionally hear the melodic whistle of bobwhites signaling their midtown presence barely two miles from Munson Stadium. A few years later in the early 1990s, around the time I started writing in this spot for the Sherman Democrat, I had another experience or two with Grayson County quail, going on several hunts near Whitesboro with Travis Maynard, Bob Drews and Doug Rodgers.

In fact, out in the garage, I think I still have one of the articles I wrote in the aftermath of one of those long ago hunts, one that has a photo of Travis, his trademark overalls and bird vest in place, bending low to take a bobwhite quail from the mouth of his late Brittany Spaniel named Bo. It’s a wonderful memory, a story about a hunting era now long gone here in Grayson County, a time when upland bird hunters walked up behind the quivering points of bird dogs locked down on a covey of wild Texomaland quail. In fact, while a few scattered coveys might exist here and there locally, I don’t know of anyone who still hunts bobwhites in the local countryside. Put simply, if you want to chase quail this fall, you can theoretically still do that locally thanks to the Oct. 31-Feb. 28 season that will open up this weekend across Texas. But if you want to have any real chance of taking a daily limit of 15 birds, odds are, you’ll have to load up the pickup, the dog box and the shotgun and travel many miles to the west or south to find any real quail hunting possibilities. [full article]