Been hunting Blue’s here in West Texas for over 60 years and I’ve learned a few tricks that make life much simpler. After about the first two weeks of season you might as well put the Pointers up. I usually just end up using one dog after that, for no better words I’ll just call it a dead bird dog. My dead bird dog is Gus, he’s half Springer Spaniel and half Lab. He stays with me and rarely misses a downed bird. I can find the live birds and Gus finds the dead ones. I feed 14 spots for deer, turkey and quail on my place and there’s always a covey or two hanging around the feeders. Where I live our quail population is really down, haven’t hunted the last 2 years. Still have some water in our ponds but the pastures are dry and brown still. We’re already having to feed the cows and the future isn’t looking good.
Know what you mean about feeding. It is just like winter never stopped except for temp. Moved cows to last pasture that is not dirt and feeding every other day. Gonna start selling light calves and older cows at end of month if things don’t change. It doesn’t look good