Mel5141:
My wife and I are recently retired - at least partially for me. We are looking at places a little warmer than Wisconsin for the winter months and really do not care for Florida. Can you give me some suggestions in West Texas for nicer places to stay for 4-8 weeks at a time. It would really be nice to hunt and shoot clays in temperatures about 15oF with less than 2 feet of snow. I just passed on a late season grouse hunt here because we are suppose to have wind chills at -20oF. That's tough on the fingers, toes and dog.
Tom--The problem with hunting in TX is that most private ground is leased. Often by deer hunters; sometimes by deer hunters who don't bird hunt, so the bird hunting can be "subleased" from them or you can still lease from the owner directly. Often done by a group of bird hunters. If you find one of those deer leases where they don't hunt birds, that works out pretty well for winter quail hunting. Deer season closes at the end of the year (or used to), which still leaves several weeks to hunt quail--that likely haven't been hunted up to that point. But if you're looking for places to hunt quail on public land, OK/NM/AZ are all better bets. Although especially in NM and AZ, the quail numbers likely won't be what you'd find in TX in a year like this one. I hunted the OK Panhandle last year, and quail numbers were very good. I think more public land opportunities there than TX.
