While bird dogs, bespoke shotguns, tall pines, and the dynamic wild birds themselves are all integral to the mise-en-scène of the old-school quail hunts on the plantations in the Red Hills of Georgia, the mule-drawn wagon perhaps most powerfully conjures the unhurried elegance of the sport in its Gilded Age peak. The wagons, also known as hacks, were once made by hand on those plantations, which were owned by America’s post–Civil War industrialist class—the Whitneys, Phippses, Mellons—who procured the spreads around Thomasville on the cheap after the war. They initially bought the land for timber, and that wood helped build a country just entering its prime. But they held on to it (as their descendants still do in some cases) because of the wild quail hunting, which is arguably the…
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Garden & Gun (Digital) - 1 Issue, October/November 2023