On the Ground: A Deep Dive into Upland Bird Hunting

Haley catches up with Senior VP of Mirr Ranch Group Jeff Hubbard to dive into the world of upland bird hunting. Jeff shares his deep knowledge and personal experiences from growing up hunting in Georgia to pursuing upland birds across the U.S., and how he's seen the hunting landscape change over the years.

Interested in getting in on the hunt? Haley and Jeff explore what makes a ranch ideal for upland bird hunting, including essential habitat features like food, water, and cover, as well as what it takes to sustain bird populations on private lands.

Listeners will learn the ins and outs of hunting with dogs, key upland bird species like quail, pheasants, and grouse, and the specific challenges facing the upland bird population. Jeff also discusses how to prepare for the hunt, including training dogs and understanding the seasonal rhythms of upland bird habitats. Plus, they cover some of the best upland bird hunting spots across the American West.

Topics

[0:00] Introduction to Jeff and Upland Bird Hunting

[2:43] What makes a ranch ideal for hunts?

[8:11] Best hunting locations and bird behavior

[16:06] Man’s best friend and memorable hunts

[24:13] Comparing upland bird with big game

[29:37] Speed round and best recipes

Need professional help finding, buying or selling a legacy ranch, contact us:

Mirr Ranch Group

901 Acoma Street

Denver, CO 80204

Phone: (303) 623-4545

https://www.MirrRanchGroup.com/

Transcript

Haley Mirr (00:06):
Welcome back to the Land Bulletin podcast, where every other week we bring you experts in the field to impart their knowledge when it comes to the ranch and sporting property market, buying and selling advice, the latest, best stewardship practices, as well as topics that impact landowners every day. I'm your host, Haley Mirr. Let's jump in. Welcome back to the Land Bulletin. I'm Haley Mirr, and today we're going to be going over upland bird hunting properties. What makes a property a good candidate for upland bird hunting? What landowners can do to kind of protect their properties for those types of birds. And today helping me out is senior VP Jeff Hubbard. Jeff has been bird hunting since he was a small tyke down in Georgia, so he's definitely the guy to talk to. So welcome Jeff to the lamb bulletin.

Jeff Hubbard (00:56):
Thanks, Haley. Good to be here. Appreciate it.

Haley Mirr (00:59):
Yeah, of course. Well, one of these days I'll actually get there and out there and start hunting with you, but before I do, would love to kind of first go into what upland bird hunting is. Some people might not know kind of what that means, what constitutes and qualifies an upland bird. Let's start there. So what is upland bird hunting and what are kind of the birds that we might see if we're considering taking on the sport?

Jeff Hubbard (01:26):
Yeah, so the definition of an upland bird is a bird that is a scratching bird. You think of domestic birds that would be a chicken, a bird that spends most of its life on the ground, a chicken or a Turkey as opposed to say a dove or a duck, which spend most of their time in the air or in trees because they're scratching birds. They tend to have, there are a few exceptions with grouse and things, and because they spend most of their time on the ground, they literally scratch around and scratch for food, scratch for bugs. And because they're not using those breast muscles extensively to fly, they're not as strong and full of blood and they're about dark, like say a dove or a duck. So that's why you have a white breast on a chicken, on a Turkey, on a quail. And frankly, most upland birds, they do spend the vast majority of their life on the ground. They all can fly, obviously. But yeah, that's how we categorize a quote, upland bird.

Haley Mirr (02:28):
Okay, great. And what makes a ranch a good candidate for these types of scratch birds that tend to stay on the ground? That's where a lot of their population is. What makes a ranch a good candidate? If you're a buyer looking for that,

Jeff Hubbard (02:43):
It's really just like all of nature. And with all animals, you got to have three things. You got to have food, you have to have water, and you have to have cover. Cover is particularly important with upland birds because they do spend their life on the ground and they spend their life, their lives evading all kinds of predators, hawks, coyotes, snakes, coons, well, at least with the nesting coons and possums, they're always running and hiding from something. So the more cover they have, the better off they are. And food and water as well. Food, there's a lot of natural food out there, a lot of naturally growing wheats and legumes that they can consume. They also love to eat some of our farm products like grain, sorghum, milo, and corn, of course. So that can be helpful. And water as well. I mean, there are some upland species that can thrive in desert environments.

(03:44):
And if the nights are cool enough and the mornings are warming up quite frequently, they can get enough moisture just from the dew on the weeds. But ideally you would have good sources of water for them. They do need water just like every animal does. So yeah, just in general, food, water and cover and cover probably being the most important. I mean, you're going to find food and water everywhere. They eat insects as well, of course. Generally the more cover you have, the more insect life you're going to have. And a lot of the cover is dependent upon spring moisture. The more spring moisture you have, the more weed growth you're going to have. It's going to be thicker, they're going to be able to hide more effectively, and they tend to thrive when you have really good spring moisture. And that's just a mother nature thing by and large. I mean, you can irrigate natural ground and cause growth in the weeds and legumes, but that's a lot of money to spend on growing weeds. So

Haley Mirr (04:40):
Yeah, I was going to say, well, I know you guys have a lease out west for bird hunting, and I know you've bird hunted down in Georgia, but we primarily do all of our kind of marketing in the Rocky Mountain region. Are there any areas in particular out west? If I'm a buyer, I know I want to be out west, but this is one of my favorite pastimes, some locations that I should be looking at when looking for upland bird ranches?

Jeff Hubbard (05:06):
Yeah, I mean the prairie states are generally the best. I mean particularly as it relates to pheasant and quail and grouse and pheasant of course are not indigenous to the United States. They were introduced many years ago. But the northern bob white quail is sort of the king of all upland birds, and they only exist east of the Rocky mountains. We have some in eastern Colorado. Kansas is a great state for quail, Oklahoma, Texas parts in Eastern New Mexico, some in Nebraska, maybe a little bit in the Dakotas, but for the other indigenous species, native North American species, which would really include the grouse, whether it's sage grouse, blue grouse, short tail grouse, kind of the mountain states, notably Montana, I would say, just because they've got so much sort of rolling grasslands in the Eastern. Two thirds of the state more or less are very good habitat for grouse and pheasants.

(06:04):
Pheasants are a pretty hardy species. They live in eastern Colorado, eastern Wyoming, and a lot in Montana. You always think of course of South Dakota when you make of pheasants in Nebraska, North Dakota. And then we have a couple of introduced upland species in addition to the pheasant, which are the Hungarian partridge and chucker partridge. Both of those are indigenous to Eastern Europe and parts of Asia, but they were introduced here like the pheasant many years ago, and they've really thrived. We do not have those species here in Colorado. You can find 'em in Wyoming and the Dakotas and Montana, and they're a really highly sought after species for upland bird hunters.

Haley Mirr (06:45):
And this might be a dumb question, but do upland birds migrate similar to other birds or do they kind of stay in one place and that's their habitat?

Jeff Hubbard (06:56):
That's a great question. They do not do the big migrations like doves and lots of, frankly, most bird species migrate upland birds pretty much live where they're born and they die where they're born. And with a few exceptions, I mean the sharp tail grouse will move up into the higher country in the summer months and tend to move lower when the winter comes and it starts to snow. But the ones you generally think of pheasants and quail and even turkeys, turkeys will move around a little more, but they pretty much stay where they're born and they're really creatures of habit. I mean, if they're not disturbed, we have, as you've referenced, I lease a lot of land in Kansas for Bobwhite quail hunting, and you can generally find them more or less in the same spot, and I mean within a hundred yards of where you've found 'em in the past all the time. So yeah, they don't move around a whole lot. They like their house.

Haley Mirr (07:53):
It makes it feel even more prudent to sustain those types of habitats. If I have this population of birds that have set up shop on my property, what are some of the measures you can take to mitigate energy rest to that habitat if you want to sustain those populations? For sport,

Jeff Hubbard (08:11):
The most experience I have is with quail, which, and this would really apply to pheasants as well. Ideally, the reason the quail and pheasant populations have survived in the prairie states or have thrived in the prairie states is because there's a lot of feed. I mean, it's the bread basket of the world. There's a lot of farming, most namely corn and soybeans and grain sorghum, all of which quail consume. Their preference is grain sorghum, also known as milo, which is a cattle feed. Of course, they love corn and as do pheasants. So the ideal habitat, to the extent that one is really interested in making their quill crop thrive is to have some farm ground. And then the farm ground ideally would be adjacent to some heavy cover just natural weeds and brush. We've had this, this crisis in the eastern United States of loss of quail in general.

(09:13):
I mean, when I was a kid, and I'm aging myself because I'm talking about the late seventies, early eighties, but there were quail everywhere east of the Mississippi River, I mean from southern Florida all the way up to Canada. There were lots of 'em, and there were lots of people hunting 'em, and they were sustainable year over year. But as demography started to shift over the years, people, country people left the country, kids didn't want to have anything to do with small farms and living out in the country and moved to the city. And those farms were aggregated by bigger operations that had better equipment and better, more efficient farming practices. And they farmed instead of 160 acre tract that used to be 120 acres of farm ground and 40 acres of brush and weeds and edges and rows, well, it's now 160 acres of farm ground.

(10:08):
So all the cover, if you will, went away. And there are many factors, and people have been arguing about why the quail situation is so bad east the Mississippi now. But I think the biggest reason is the change in the landscape. And also we've had this explosion in small mammal critters like coons and possums, and they don't eat quail per se, but they do raid and nest and eat quail eggs. And you think about it, 50 years ago in the South, and not just the south, I mean really everywhere east of the Mississippi, you had a lot of country folks, people living out in the country, and back then people would trap and eat those animals they were eating out of, living on a small farm. And people used to go coon hunting, and I mean, nobody does that anymore. So you just had this explosion in their population.

(11:00):
And I think that's had a pretty big effect as well. And this is good, but once it was discovered that DDT was negatively impacting raptors and it was outlawed, we had this explosion in the Raptor population, which again, I'm an advocate for that. I don't think the raptors frankly do all that much to hurt the quail. I think it's more coons, possums. But it's very interesting. And again, everybody's got their own ideas. People will argue about it until the cows come home and they always will. But probably a combination of factors. But it's too bad because hand in hand with that, you've lost the, a hundred years ago, you had tons of quail hunters, tons of bird dogs all over the country. It's kind of a dying deal, and it's too bad. I mean, that culture is just kind of fading away. It's still strong in Texas, places where they still can have a lot of birds, but in general, yeah, we don't have near as many upland bird hires as we used to.

Haley Mirr (11:59):
And it's interesting because when I think of Georgia, when I think of the south, I think of bird hunting. So the fact that that has dissipated to the extent that you're talking about, it's just sad because it is kind of the cultural kind of historic piece of that community down there.

Jeff Hubbard (12:16):
Oh, absolutely. And I mean, there are still areas around Albany and Thomasville where ultra wealthy people who can afford to groom their land in a way that is perfect for quail. And we're talking about big, they call 'em plantations, where literally their annual operating budgets are in the millions of dollars between forestry management, slashing and burning food plots, managing and manicuring the land in such a way that quail will thrive. And it works. I mean, you got to be something about the soils right around Albany, Georgia and right around Thomasville, Georgia. And you can try those practices in other areas and it just doesn't work. But in those two places, if you've got the money, you can grow wild quail and that there still are places where you'll see 60 coves a day. Now these places are exceedingly private and extravagant, and they're not commercial. So if you're lucky enough to get invited, you can experience that. But yeah, just for the regular old guy, he used to go out with his dad 15 minutes from the house onto the buddy's place or whatever, walk around with the dogs buying birds. That doesn't exist anymore, unfortunately, out east of Mississippi.

Haley Mirr (13:29):
Do you ever foresee that changing at all if some of those populations of little mammals and some of that stuff gets handled and maybe there's legislation for the farming?

Jeff Hubbard (13:39):
Yeah, I think it has been a crisis, a cultural crisis for bird hunters for the last 50 years in that part of the world. And there's been a ton of research and a ton of money that's been devoted to figuring it out and fixing it. But so far, we hadn't been able to figure it out. And I hope that that changes, but I'm not particularly optimistic. I mean, the good news is Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas are thriving as it relates to quail. They're just as good as they've ever been. And the truth is, most of those people who like me, who grew up back when there were wild quail everywhere down in the south, they like it enough. They just move out here, which is what I did, or move to Texas.

Haley Mirr (14:23):
And that's why you're a broker. You help those people find their spot.

Jeff Hubbard (14:27):
That's right.

Haley Mirr (14:28):
Awesome.

Jeff Hubbard (14:30):
But I think that loss of the natural stuff, because of the, and you can't blame the farming industry. I mean, they won't maximize their income and scale their farming practices. And the equipment's gotten better, the pesticides and herbicides are incredible. So they've just lost a ton of habitat east of the Mississippi. They really, in the prairie states, like in Kansas, you still have a lot of small farms. I mean quarter section, hundred 60 acres. There've been a lot of measures put forward by the game departments. Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, for example, pays and the CRP program, conservation Reserve program pays farmers to leave some edge, leave some cover, and not farm corner to corner so that you have no habitat for game. And that's been just extraordinarily helpful for quail and pheasants and other game as well, deer, turkeys and everything else. But yeah, it's a good question. I think, again, you go back to the basics, food, water, and cover without getting too technical. And if you're farming corner to corner, you got food and you're probably going to have water, but you don't have cover. So

Haley Mirr (15:42):
Yeah, that's huge for these guys. Well, that's good to know. I also would love to kind of focus, okay, here's the ranches that would be where you would find a lot of the best upland bird hunting. I kind of want to get started. What's kind of the best hunt you've ever been on a day in the life, how you get ready to become a hunter of this type of bird hunting?

Jeff Hubbard (16:06):
Yeah. Well, the reason upland bird hunting is so charming, and the reason I'm so passionate about it is because you do it with dogs in general, because these animals spend the majority of the time or their time on the ground, they're walking around feeding and they're spreading their scent. And we have pointing dogs that run the fields, run the country. And when they detect via their nose, when they smell these birds, they'll point the birds and then the human walks the birds up. And this is a, B, c 1, 2, 3, probably to most of the listeners. But for those who don't know a lot about it, I think that's the real charm in the endeavor, in the sport, if you will, is a man or a woman and their dogs pursuing this game. The pointing dogs instinctively will point and upland burr. I mean, you can take a puppy that's four weeks old and dangle a Turkey feather in front of it, and it'll stop and point.

(17:09):
I mean, that's just the way God built them or it's the way that people have bred them to become what they are. But you need to be able to teach 'em to hold a point because their instinct is going to be to point and then to run after the birds and that they're a hundred yards away, will the birds get up and everything's ruined. So they have to hold the point, and then the hunter walks over and gets the bird up, hopefully shoots killed. And maybe I got distracted there, Haley, but you asked about the best hunt I've ever had. Texas is traditionally known as in the last 40, 50 years, probably as the best all around Bob White Quill state in the country. They tend to have these boom and bust cycles depending on spring rains. If it's dry, then they can lose an entire quail crop just because they don't have the cover.

(17:53):
But if they get good moisture and have a lot of weeds and legumes and insects from the spring, I had a day one time in the Rolling Plains of Texas with my dogs on our ranch near Aspermont, Texas, between Alene and Lubbock. We had a day one day where we found 47 cos of Bob Whites in one day, which is just extraordinary. I mean, I may never have another day like that again in my life. And that was in 2016, so that would've been in the fall of 16, and then the spring of 17 it got droughty and it stayed that way ever since. And they literally have, I mean, I talked to that landowner. He is a friend. They don't have any quail right now. I mean, that could all change this year. They actually had pretty good moisture this year. I don't know what the situation is out there this year, but you go one year from finding 47 covey of birds in a day, and the next year you might find one or three or none.

Haley Mirr (18:45):
You say something like that. And it's interesting because can you really depend on one location every year or is it something where you, as a skier, you read the snow report? Is that something that a lot of the community of upland bird hunters do that kind of share that information? Or is it

Jeff Hubbard (19:04):
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, Eastern Montana is just, they got extraordinary spring moisture. There's tons of cover and there's tons of birds more than they've ever seen up there. We've been hunting up there for 20 years, and I suspect the prairie states are the same. A couple of my dogs were training in North Dakota in August, and the trainer said they just had tons and tons of birds, and I hope Kansas does. It looks like they do Texas. I haven't heard any reports yet, but I've been kind of watching the, I know south Texas has birds. We're hunting in South Texas in February, but I don't know about the Rolling Plains, but yes, absolutely. And by the way, there are upland birds in other parts of the west. I mean, there are desert quail and mes, quail and New Mexico and Arizona and California quail and mountain quail in Oregon and California. But most of my stuff has been kind of east of the Rockies focused on quail, me personally, and then Hans and parts and, sorry, sharp tail grouse up in Montana.

Haley Mirr (20:15):
And is there, you've mentioned a few seasons of hunting. You mentioned September, February. Is it kind of wherever you're hunting, you can kind of find a good time to do it? Or is it kind of you want to do it when the moisture's high or things like that?

Jeff Hubbard (20:32):
Yeah, I mean, because it involves dogs, you generally want to do it when it's not hot, if you can help it. The quail season, obviously biased towards quail here. I don't want to ignore the other species, but in the states, Oklahoma and Texas, the season runs from generally from early to mid-November through middle of February. The Northern states may, their seasons might open a little earlier just because naturally it's cooler up there. Obviously Montana's open right now and grouse, sharp tail grouse are kind of interesting because this time of year they're paired up, they're in small groups. As it gets colder, they tend to congregate in big groups of 50 plus birds, and they can be very difficult to hunt generally, with the exception of Montana, 1st of November through middle of February is what you're looking at.

Haley Mirr (21:24):
And then you mentioned, and I never do this, so do you train your dogs every year or is it a one and done kind of thing?

Jeff Hubbard (21:32):
It's mostly a one and done thing. You train 'em as puppies, generally, you start training 'em, putting 'em on a board, teaching 'em to be steady. And the woe, oh, when they're three or four months old, and that's kind of an ongoing process. I send them up there to the prairie, Northern prairies, up to North Dakota just to get 'em back in shape. Just going back for a refresher course. They get to get into birds, and to the extent they make mistakes, they're corrected, they're really ready to go. When I start hunting around here in November, I mean, the best way for a dog to learn is other than the basics coming to you and hunting with you and knowing how to hold a point is just to be in birds, because then he figures out where they live. He understands how close he needs to be without bumping the birds. And if you're lucky, you got lots of birds and it can be difficult to train dogs on released birds, pen raised birds because they tend to run. And I mean, that's really your only option, particularly when they're puppies. But if you can get 'em in wild birds when they're young with more experienced dogs, I mean, that's the best way for them to learn.

Haley Mirr (22:45):
I'm training Tater right now with an electric collar, so I think I might've waited a little later, which is not good.

Jeff Hubbard (22:53):
I don't know how people did all this before. You had electronic collars and I have a GPS device that's also I can stimulate 'em with, but I can see where they are at all times. So you don't lose dogs anymore, which is great. Was that

Haley Mirr (23:11):
A thing people used to lose dogs during the hunt?

Jeff Hubbard (23:14):
Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't all that unusual for people to be out hunting and a dog runs off and maybe points somewhere and doesn't leave the point and you can't find him. And I remember doing that some as a kid. We never actually lost one. My dad would, and this worked. I mean, he would take his jacket off, set it down at the last place he saw the dog, and we'd go to the house and go back out in the morning. The dog would be right there at the jacket.

Haley Mirr (23:42):
Geez. They're smart. They're smarter than mine. Well, I'd love to know you. I mean, you are not only seen as an upland bird hunter. You're also seen as a predominant big game hunter in the firm. What is the biggest difference, I guess, from the two communities, because they're very different, you would think when you hear hunting that it's all kind of the same, but what are the biggest differences and why do sometimes you lean towards the upland bird hunting community?

Jeff Hubbard (24:13):
Yes, they're really apples and oranges and the whole cultures are very distinct. I sort of unusual in that I do a lot of both. Most people are usually one or the other, and we've honestly lost a lot of upland bird enthusiasts just because of the crisis with quail in the eastern half of the country, east of the Mississippi. But quail hunting tends to be expensive, involves travel generally. There are public land opportunities for quail hunting. They're not a lot. So generally you're talking about leasing land or paying trespass fees and you're talking about owning dogs if you want to do it right. And that's, again, I think that's the real charm in the sport and owning dogs is I have three, I have two pointers and a setter train 'em and feeding them and vetting them and all that. It's a lot of money and a lot of work and a lot of time, I mean, of course you get it back in spades.

(25:12):
I mean, that's sort of the case, even just with a pet dog, but you got to be pretty dedicated to being an upland bird. Harder to be the serious one that does a lot, and you do to be a big game hunter as well. Although big game hunting is generally less expensive. There's tons of public land opportunities. If you're not a super selective hunter, if you're not looking for the oldest and biggest, you're generally going to probably have some success year in and year out. The populations don't fluctuate with large game like they do upland birds, especially a whitetailed deer. I mean, you got whitetailed deer in 48 of our states. I believe the western states, California and Arizona have slightly different subspecies of whitetailed deer, but I mean, they're more whitetailed deer hunters than any other animal on the planet. You can live in Manhattan and be deer hunting in 30 minutes. It's, there are a lot more of 'em, and it's less expensive, and it's a great way to get out in nature, enjoy the outdoors. But yeah, upland bird hunting, if you're going to be serious about it and have your own dogs, it's a lot of work and a lot of money for people who are into it like I am. It's sure worth it.

Haley Mirr (26:22):
And it seems like, I know big game hunting is too, but at a certain point, big game hunting is a lot on the body, so I feel like upland bird hunting is something you can do for a while.

Jeff Hubbard (26:33):
You can, I mean, particularly elk hunting and other big game hunting in the Intermountain West, not so much antelope, but deer and elk hunting are physically demanding and they're big heavy animals and they tend to live in high altitude, challenging, steep, kind of rugged terrain. So you got to be, being young and good shape is very helpful, being in good shape. And with, of course, we're in flat country, we're in Kansas, but on all of our leases out there, we walk. So I mean, there's days when we'll walk 15, 16 miles a day. It's not challenging walking, but it's helpful to be in decent shape. You can always ride up a side by side and run your dogs like that, but we like to walk, so you get your exercise. But yeah, upland bird hunting, it's more social. You don't have to be totally set up at daylight and all that kind of stuff. It's a little more bougie, I would say, than the way we do. It's not because we've all got our own dogs and

Haley Mirr (27:34):
Walking forever.

Jeff Hubbard (27:36):
Yeah, we're walking and we only hunt wild birds, all that. But traditionally, at least quail hunting was known as kind of a gentleman's sport.

Haley Mirr (27:47):
And you do it with, you do it. I know you've done it with your family forever. Do your boys do it too now?

Jeff Hubbard (27:52):
They do. I've got two boys. One's sophomore at Auburn near where I grew up in Georgia, and the other is a sophomore in high school. And I have a daughter that's a freshman at Auburn, but she's not too into hunting unfortunately. But my boys are just obsessed with it. They love the dogs and they love the big game hunt as well. I brought 'em up doing all of it. My son and I just actually, he was lucky enough to draw a moose tag and kill a nice bull up in the Lost Creek wilderness about an hour southwest of Denver a couple weeks ago. So yeah, they're super into all of it. Bad habits.

Haley Mirr (28:29):
I love that. That's all right. I take after my dad too, so I get it. And I guess one last funny question, what is your favorite way to prepare a bird after a hunt?

Jeff Hubbard (28:44):
Yes, that's a really good question. Quail are known as a delicacy. They really are just a small chicken meat wise, my favorite way to do 'em is just in a crockpot low and slow with gravy. The meat just falls off the bone, super tender, put it over rice. That's pretty straightforward and pretty down home basic. But I really do think that's the best way to do it. And we like to make gumbo with our quail as well. We do that in the crockpot. That's good.

Haley Mirr (29:16):
I love that. A nice southern gent right there. Okay, Jeff. So now it's time for our land bulletin speed round that we do with friends and family, just because it's a little bit easier. Okay. Best time to hunt early morning or late afternoon,

Jeff Hubbard (29:37):
Early morning.

Haley Mirr (29:38):
What's the most scenic hunting location you've ever been to? And this can be upland or big game,

Jeff Hubbard (29:43):
Let's say Cielo Vista there.

Haley Mirr (29:45):
Okay. Cielo Vista. Do they have bird hunting down there, or was that mostly elk?

Jeff Hubbard (29:49):
That's mostly elk. They do have blue grouse, but nobody hunts 'em.

Haley Mirr (29:53):
I know you might be partial to this question, but best hunting dog breed

Jeff Hubbard (29:57):
Corner, which is an English coer. But if you're in the business, you don't say, you can tell it's a newbie. If they say English pointer, you just call 'em pointers.

Haley Mirr (30:05):
Oh, I love that. Wait, you have three. Are they all pointers? Are they

Jeff Hubbard (30:11):
Two pointers and one setter? English setter. You're splitting hairs between English setters and pointers. They're both terrific pointers tend to be a little harder charging, a little harder headed, a little tougher and bigger running, and not quite as biddable as an English setter. They're both terrific breeds though, for quail.

Haley Mirr (30:32):
That's awesome. One piece of gear you never leave home without when going on a hunt

Jeff Hubbard (30:38):
Gone.

Haley Mirr (30:40):
That's easy. Perfect. That's a great answer. And then what's your favorite post hunt meal when you're just exhausted

Jeff Hubbard (30:50):
Mexican.

Haley Mirr (30:53):
Sweet. Me too. That was perfect. Perfect. Great. Well, thanks so much, Jeff for coming on to chat about upland bird hunting with me. As you can see, I don't know much about it, but I would love to get out there one day. I do not have a bird dog, but maybe we can use yours. Exactly.

Jeff Hubbard (31:13):
Would love to have you come along and thank you very much, Haley. Thanks land Bulletin. Thanks all your listeners.

Haley Mirr (31:20):
Awesome. We'll chat next time. Thanks for joining us today. To learn more about the ranch real estate market or our ranch marketing process, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter on our website@merranchgroup.com or give us a call at (303) 623-4545. See you next time.