Have dogs, will travel

Written by Ralph Winingham

Wednesday, 06 February 2008

Quail farm owner, guide offers hunters special service Quail farm owner, guide offers hunters special service The shout of “Hunt ’em up, Hank!” is punctuated by a whirl of wings and a popping of shotgun blasts time after time across the brushy fields of a South Texas ranch as quail hunting guide Tito Killian plies his skills. “This is the way to do it,’’ said Mike Steel of San Antonio, one of the four hunters taking advantage of Killian’s “have dogs, will travel” service that provides nearly everything but shooting ability for hunters looking for a prime-time quail hunting experience. “I’ve had my own dogs in the past and worked with them, but these (Killian’s) dogs are professionals. They work all the time and really know what they are doing,’’ Steel said. “Most people just don’t have the time to train their own dogs to work this well,’’ he added. Killian is the owner and operator of Outdoor Accents Quail Farm in Devine, where he provides 35,000 to 40,000 pen-raised quail each year to hunting operations across the country. For the past eight years, he has also been conducting hunts for wild or pen-raised birds utilizing his kennel of English pointers and Boykin flushing dogs. As Steel and his brother, Mark, who were both participating in a January hunt, can attest, Killian’s service is ideal for those hunters who don’t have the time or patience to train and work their own dogs. Killian travels with his dogs to hunt wild quail where the landowners or leaseholders don’t have dogs. And he also will bring quail to guarantee shooting. Having learned his quail hunting tactics from hands-on experience since he was 8 years old hunting with his father, Killian said he would have never guessed even 20 years ago that quail hunting would become such a viable business. “Hunting wild quail is always such a boom or bust situation. One year you might have quail everywhere and the next year you can’t find any. More and more people are discovering that you can always have shooting with pen-raised birds. “On a lot of my hunts, I am working with people who have never even picked up a shotgun or with young kids, but we also deal with a lot of experienced hunters,’’ Killian said. “Sometimes it is like controlled chaos, but as long as the hunters listen to me, we work out fine.’’ Killian is a good judge of shooting ability, having earned numerous national and world titles in the 1970s and 1980s as a member of Trinity University’s highly touted “Cosmic Cowboys” collegiate skeet team. “What I have learned in the past few years is that hunting is going smaller. People want to hunt smaller areas, without so much walking, and want the dogs to range close to them,’’ he said, explaining that he focuses on that concept in training both his pointers and flushing dogs. Killian said he likes to keep his hunting groups limited to about three to five shooters and will work about 50 acres at a time. He normally brings about 10 dogs with him for each hunt, swapping out the pointers and retrievers when they tire from busting through the brush. “It is hard walking, particularly with wild birds, for both the hunters and the dogs. I don’t like to work either of them too hard,’’ he said. “Most people don’t like to walk all day to kill four or five wild birds. That is why the pen-raised birds are so popular. You can get a bunch of shooting and a bunch of birds — as long as you can hit them.” Killian can be reached at the Outdoor Accents Quail Farm by calling (210) 827-3834.

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 06 February 2008 )

 

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