Page 11 - 2020 November/December Outdoor Oklahoma Magazine

I was thinking of all the time.”
“I love to watch the dogs work. The dogs enjoy it, and
I enjoy it. JErEMY JoHnSon/CoUrTESY
“I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t do a lot of social-
izing. But quail hunting to me was almost a religious
experience. I can’t explain it.”
Jim picked up a hardbound, fabric-covered book and
began thumbing through the lined pages. “I’ve got 45
years of my living right in this one little old, worn-out-
looking journal.” He began reading aloud. “This year, I
shot five birds. Then 114, 171, 238 and so on.” He keeps
his score by years, not seasons.
Each journal entry begins with the date. “January
30th: five quail, 12-gauge Ruger red label, hunted over Jim Johnson takes aim after a covey rise.
Gracie, John and Delmar.”
He logs the number of quail he bagged, and the total
number taken by all the hunters he was with. He said
he’s a private man. Normally he prefers to hunt only JErEMY JoHnSon/CoUrTESY
with his three sons. “Hunting just came naturally to all
of them. When Dad went hunting, they were welcome
to go along.”
And Dad went hunting a lot, and he still does, for the
most part in Osage County. Last January, he logged 17
hunting trips, for an average of about four hunts per
week. His harvest for January and half of February was
61 quail.

Lifetime of Knowledge
“The birds here have never been like they are out
west,” Jim said. “When I would find a covey here, I’d find
three or four out there.” In Osage County back in the
day, he said he would be lucky to find two coveys in a
morning, and lucky again to find two more in the after-
noon. He would hunt sunup to sundown, and he would
wear blue jeans. He hunted so much that those blue
jeans ended up rubbing his legs bare of any hair.
Jim’s learned many things over the years about quail
hunting. “The old hunters that I knew growing up when Jim Johnson considers a harvest of one or two birds a good hunt
I was a boy told me to never shoot a covey down to less these days.
than five or six birds. You see, that’s enough to leave at
least one breeding pair,” so the covey could regenerate
for the next season. They also taught Jim that leaving JErEMY JoHnSon/CoUrTESY
five or six birds will allow the covey to produce enough
body heat to survive extreme winter weather.
His favored shotgun has an improved cylinder choke.
And his choice of shot size depends on the time of the
season: early on, he uses No. 8 shot, but switches to 7
1/2 later in the season because the birds have thicker
feathers, they flush farther out, and the heavier shot
carries farther.
Bird dogs: They either have the instinct to hunt, or
they don’t. He doesn’t believe in penning a dogs, saying
they must to be able to roam and learn about hunting.
And he shared something he learned from an old book:
When a dog won’t release a retrieved bird, grab the dog
on its flank and lift up abruptly, and the dog will spit out
the bird. Jim said it works every time. The quail-hunting father and sons of the Johnson family: Joshua,
Jeremy, Jim and Jasin.
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