![]() ![]() After reminding each other to watch for rattlesnakes, the Kendalls wade through the grass and prickly pear toward the lone mesquite. The birds quickly regroup in a tight, outward-facing circle-“coveying up,” in hunter parlance. They’re smart! They counted heads real quick.” If he were by himself, or he was lost, he’d be talking to me constantly, but they’ve already got the covey together. “He told me he’s over there, and he wants me to come over. ![]() “He’s checking me,” says Kendall, a lifelong hunter and professor of environmental toxicology at Texas Tech University. The bobwhites dart to the base of a solitary mesquite tree some thirty yards away, and Kendall climbs from his Polaris to whistle the bobwhite’s distinctive call: “Poor…bobwhite! Poor…bob white!” A bird answers, but only once. When Kendall lets off the brakes and eases forward, the air explodes with sound and movement as a cluster of quail take off in a burst. “Look at the grass move.” Bluestem and broomweed jerk and sway as unseen quail scoot through the knee-high weeds. “There are a lot more than those two,” says his son, Ron Jr., from the back seat. Suddenly, he mashes the brakes as two bobwhites scurry across the dirt road in front of him. With the dew still pearling on the grass, Kendall cruises around his 2,200-acre West Texas ranch in an off-road vehicle, his eyes locked on the ground. It’s a late September morning and opening day for the northern bobwhite quail is still weeks away, but Ronald Kendall is already on the hunt for the once ubiquitous game bird, known to its aficionados as Gentleman Bob. ![]()
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