Gene LeBoeuf, an Albuquerque bird biologist, displays a handful of quail from southeastern New Mexico. Photo by Craig Springer

By Craig Springer

They call Montana the Big Sky Country, but the fine folks up north don't have a lock on the actual commodity of open skies. Southeast New Mexico is broad and open, and with gentle features pleasing to the eye.

The horizon is always a far, distant feature, never seeming to come closer. And by the time scaled quail come into season, hawks from the north adorn the skies aloft on thermals, heading to more southerly climes. With their characteristic white rump, these harriers waft effortlessly low over the bunch grasses without flapping a wing, always looking down. They turn their heads side to side, never seeming to tire. They ride the ever-present breezes and stiff winds that seem endemic to the place, while they search for an unsuspecting mouse or snake, or maybe even what I am after. And I don't mind.

I'm walking with a 20-gauge Weatherby over my shoulder in the wide-open shinnery oak flats somewhere between Portales and Milensand. The oaks clip my brush pants at the bottom of my shins. I'm capped by a dome of cloudless sky, dark blue straight up, grading to powdery pale on the horizons. The landscape is immense, but nearly featureless, save for a gentle hill or two and a few distant farmhouses. An ancient windmill, probably not used since I was knee-high to a Labrador pup has the word "Chicago" stenciled on galvanized metal. The blades are partly covered in windborne dirt that came from somewhere west of here. I'm hunting birds, scaled quail and bobwhites, in about the only place in New Mexico where you can potentially bump up a covey of both from the same covers.

An easterner might be taken aback at what bobwhite quail will use for cover in this harsh place. You won't find raspberry thickets, hedgerows or hawthorns. Weedy draws of the eastern uplands are nonexistent here. The smallest of hummocks and swales, the bunch grasses, mesquite and yucca provide cover the birds need from the wind, harriers, bird dogs and shotgunners like us.

My hunting companions came from points well beyond the area. Bill End, founder of Land's End, and buddy Joe Wishcamper came from Maine to hunt birds - a stopover on their way to hunt Coues white-tailed deer. End retired and hunts two months out of each year. Like most of us, Wishcamper still labors to put beans on the table. Gene LeBeouf, a bird biologist, and Wayne Wolf are down from Albuquerque.

Wolf is no stranger to this place; he learned a fair bit about southeast New Mexico quail hunting in his youth in the late 1940s and early '50s. He spent autumn seasons chasing birds in this country. That was before he rambled off to the University of New Mexico on a Ford Foundation scholarship; he had the starting QB slot for coach Marv Levy's Lobos. He handed the ball off to some future NFL starters, but the future handed him a different course. At 175 pounds, he was on the small side for professional football, and instead started a law practice in Albuquerque. Now semi-retired, southeast New Mexico continues to draw him back to hunt birds. He may have left southeast New Mexico behind, but it never left him.

"The flat land is peaceful," said Wolf. "Coming here is like getting back to nature. It still feels a little like home to me."

But Wolf has seen a lot of changes since the 1950s.

"It was nothing to pick up a limit of quail, and we hunted without dogs; we had mongrel farm dogs, not polished retrievers, but still we bagged a lot of birds," said Wolf.

Quail populations over time seem quite cyclic. Probably any avid bird hunter would agree. The numbers are up for a spell, then bottom out. The ups and downs are easily tied to moisture, and especially when it arrives. The young quail in particular need moisture delivered at the right time. But Wolf thinks the lows in quail numbers could be from another matter: too many people.

"Farmers farm to the fence - and who can blame them? But there's no fence rows left - there's less cover for birds," said Wolf. "It's habitat encroachment; you can look across the land and see more and more houses popping up - there's more people here than there used to be," he added in a plaintive tone.

Numbers of quail may be down over time, and the reports have been consistently dismal; the prolonged drought has been tough on wildlife. But you'd never know it based on our two-day hunt; we experienced no shortage of birds. And that might relate to the stewardship of rancher George Hay, whose land we hunted.

Hay intensively manages his livestock and pastures, a true conservationist. He's fenced off chunks of grassland to keep cows out, just for prairie chickens. Bob King of the Santa Fe Guiding Company is partnered with Hay on the cow fence-outs, and helping to develop permanent water sources. It's a great example of good stewardship on private lands, influenced by the invisible hand of the private marketplace. Motivations of both men benefit birds and hunters in a place where public lands are lacking.

American pronghorn, iconic denizens of the open, gather in loose herds here. They may give you a sideways quizzical glance. They look at you with caution, yet they're confident, seemingly never in fear as if they know they can outrun you. They can. Pronghorn look odd, like an animal put together by a committee that couldn't agree on much. Willowy legs hold up a barrel-shaped body, and their eyes, like a woodcock's, can see all around. More often than not, they can see you long before you can see them. It strikes me odd, giving pause, wondering why pronghorn run so darn fast when no predator can even come close to catching it. They can outpace a coyote by about 25 mph; seems like the odds are unfairly stacked. Pronghorn grizzle their white rump hair and scurry over the knoll to eat some more weeds in private.