Sporting

These days, the manor house is used for weddings, meetings and charity events—but it’s the quail hunting and waterfowl gunning that are Blandfield’s biggest draws. John Corey, of Richmond, a frequent hunter, says that Blandfield compares more than favorably with other East Coast private preserves. “I was in south Georgia last February, quail hunting, and went on my second Blandfield quail hunt about two weeks ago. In both places we hunted over released birds. I can say without a doubt that Blandfield [had birds that flew higher and] more birds in the [covey] rise than in Georgia. Dave Pomfret seemed very organized and focused on providing a successful hunt. Also, the thinning and clearing at Blandfield in the timber areas have improved the hunting and shooting without obstruction—unlike the terrain in Georgia. I think Jimmy Wheat’s operation has surpassed the ones I have experienced, and that, along with being less expensive, provides a better value for me.”

Colinus virginianus, or the bobwhite, has often been called the “Prince of Game Birds.” Rather than flush wildly, as a pheasant or grouse might, its defense is to hold in a covey that then erupts all at once, causing great consternation to a predator. It tends to hold fast and not flush until the last possible moment. This allows a bird dog to point it when the dog has located the covey. The bird’s small size and quick flight burst make it both fun and challenging to hunt, which increasingly takes place on private preserves as America’s quail population, over the last few decades, has dropped dramatically.

This is not due to overhunting, as some might expect, but due to loss of habitat and to modern farming practices. Marc Puckett, a wildlife division biologist for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries who has been involved in a number of studies of the bobwhite and its habitat, says that it takes very large tracts of land with diverse vegetation to attract quail. Farm fields are an ideal quail habitat—or at least they were during the gilded era of quail hunting, from the middle 1800s to the early 1900s. That was the era prior to advanced farming techniques such as chemical fertilization, and a period when the concept of crop rotation was unknown. Fields that could no longer produce were left fallow, and timber was cut to make way for new fields. The fields that were left unattended grew weeds and early-season grasses, which in the spring attracted the insects that are a major food source for newly hatched quail. Quail thrived in this early agrarian environment. There was plenty of food—and, because farmers used hedgerows to separate their fields, there was good protection from predators.