![]() Neighbors asked to purchase quail for consumption, so Odom and his family began dressing birds on a backyard picnic table for distribution. His degree in poultry science from Clemson University, plus years of professional expertise supervising chicken farms for Campbell Soup Company, gave him a serious edge for husbandry. He grew up hunting quail near Manchester State Forest and raised bobwhites in a backyard pen to train his dogs to their scent. With luck, a seasoned shooter will bag a few to take home, marinate them in buttermilk, and fry the birds up like chicken, or grill them and pile them on a thick bed of grits for breakfast.īill Odom, founder of Manchester Farms in mid-state South Carolina, knows this agrarian tradition well. The covey bursts from its enclosure in a fluttering, lightning-fast, deliberately befuddling trajectory, more often than not rocketing straight past the hunter unscathed. For generations, hunters have waited patiently for that electric moment when their bird dog comes to a tense, quivering halt, tail extended, paw retracted, nose locked in point position toward a covey. Their telltale “sliding whistle” call gives them away-as does their scent, for dogs in the know. Their numbers in the wild are not what they used to be, but they remain-hidden in the hedgerows and overgrown ditch banks that border farmland, lurking in the briar thickets and impenetrable brambles of pine savannahs.
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