Adventures in the Black Belt
In the morning, I drive to Davis Quail Hunts near Minter. This operation is run by Colvin Davis, a legendary dog trainer, and his wife, Mazie. It is not quite the size of Cottonwoods. Cozier and more like a family home where you are a houseguest. Colvin is one of those men who are in no hurry, which probably explains his ability with dogs. To work successfully with strong-willed bird dogs, you need patience bordering on serenity. That would be Colvin.

We hunt off a wagon here, which allows us to watch the dogs without distraction. And Colvin’s dogs are worth watching. They move like oil through the cover, and when they make game, they stop so suddenly that it doesn’t quite seem possible.

A little English cocker rides along in Colvin’s lap until someone knocks a bird down. Then she comes down off the wagon and goes to work. She scours the brush until she finds the downed bird, picks it up in her mouth, then hustles back to Colvin’s lap before she drops the bird and waits for praise. Which she always gets.

We shoot all afternoon and the shooting is good. It is always going to be good at one of these places. Or there are always going to be birds, anyway; the shooting part is up to you. I do okay.

We are joined for dinner by Thomas Harris, who has driven from his home in Montgomery to talk about his idea for economic development in the Black Belt. Harris is gracious, almost courtly. At dinner, he tells me about the thinking behind his creation, Alabama Black Belt Adventures.

“People in this part of the state keep waiting for something to happen, hoping for the day when they will get their automobile plant. But that day will never happen.

“So it seemed to some of us that if there was going to be economic development in the Black Belt, it would have to be based on the assets that we already have. We have a wonderful tradition of hunting and fishing on eleven million acres of land that hasn’t been developed and where there isn’t any sprawl and where people can come and experience things that just aren’t available any longer anywhere else.”

He came to the idea after studying perhaps the most celebrated of all the economic development through tourism efforts, not just in Alabama, but anywhere. That, of course, would be the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail.

If it could work for golf, then maybe it could work for bird hunting and maybe it could do something good for the Black Belt, a place he loved and where he had hunted birds all of his life.

“It’s such a beautiful, special place,” he says.

When I ask how it is going, he says he is optimistic. They are just getting started but making progress. There is a Web site that is up, and on it are listed nearly fifty lodges affiliated with Alabama Black Belt Adventures. The state is coming in with money. There are nascent marketing plans. People are getting aboard, and there is momentum behind the project.

Fortunes have been made, in these parts, on recreation. Ray Scott, who founded B.A.S.S. (Bass Anglers Sportsman Society), has a place near here and is involved in the project. So is Jackie Bushman, who founded Buckmasters, the deer hunter’s association based in Montgomery. Harris believes that quail hunting could be the next thing and that, if it is promoted, could do for the Black Belt what pheasant hunting has done for South Dakota and duck hunting has done for Stuttgart, Arkansas.

It may be a stretch. But then, Harris says, the golf trail had plenty of skeptics in the early days. In Alabama, people have seen what can happen, and they believe.

On to Shenandoah
Before he leaves to drive back  to Montgomery, Harris says he hopes my hunt the next morning at Shenandoah Plantation will be successful.

Shenandoah is west of Union Springs, a place famous for field trials and bird hunting. Its lodge is the most well-appointed of the ones I visit. The sort of place you could bring a non-hunting spouse with a fondness for comfort.

With the owners, Tom and Sue Ellen Lanier, I ride horseback through piney woods and broom sage. There was fog early but it burns off and turns into one of those brilliant late winter days with a high, clear sky and plenty of sunlight, just warm enough that you don’t need a jacket. We admire the day and remark on how fine it is and every few minutes, dismount when the dogs go on point. You could do a lot of things with a day like this, I think, but the inspired way to spend it would be on horseback, hunting birds.

Late in the morning, after we have found perhaps a dozen coveys of birds, I look up to find the source of an unusual call and watch as an adult bald eagle lands on a top branch in a tall loblolly.

We end it at noon and eat a big meal, the kind they called “dinner” way back when. Fried chicken, butter beans, collards, cornbread. I wouldn’t mind a nap but it is time to leave. My gun has been found and after a morning like this, nothing seems impossible except, perhaps, the Atlanta airport.

For more information about Cottonwoods Sportsman’s Lodge (334-628-8693), Davis Quail Hunts (334-412-4904), Shenandoah Plantation (334-321-4992), and many other lodges in the Black Belt of Alabama, go to alabamablackbeltadventures.com.