The Tradition of a Southern Gentleman

A few years back, I moved to northern Florida, specifically, the Red Hills of Florida, for a new job.

I immediately began scouring the internet to determine what my public hunting opportunities would be. I then called up a close friend, Brent, who lived in the area, and we formulated a plan. I arrived in Florida a week before my official start date so that I would have plenty of time to hunt around my new home.

As an avid bird hunter, I was ecstatic to move to this region. The Red Hills of northern Florida and southern Georgia are one of the few remaining strongholds of wild northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) populations in the country. At the core of the region are a collection of privately-owned properties managed exclusively for bobwhite. Many of these properties were purchased by affluent northerners in the late 1800's, after the Civil War ended. The families had originally traveled to Florida because they believed the humid airs cured tuberculosis. At the time of their visits, the region was going through a paradigm shift "from cotton to quail".

Robert L. Craford and William R. Bruckheimer In the postwar years, due to a multitude of reasons, the market for cotton crashed and hit record lows. The fields that once grew cotton became fallow and overgrown with weeds and shrubs. This created a perfect storm, so to speak, for bobwhite populations to explode. It was the high abundances of bobwhite, a species that held for pointing dogs and allowed for a proper English style of hunting, that intrigued and eventually anchored these wealthy families. Through time, the landowners and their land managers dialed in management practices that maximized bobwhite habitat and ensured stellar hunting year after year. For a more detailed history on the Red Hills of Florida, see The Legacy of a Red Hills Hunting Plantation: Tall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy by Crawford and Brueckheimer.