“Lady, whoa.” The German shorthair keened and quivered. She looked at each of us in turn to make sure we were ready. During the end of November, our group had prepared for the hunt of a lifetime in Arizona. Bill Valentine thumbed three rounds of No. 8s into his Browning. My dad broke his borrowed over/under and dropped two loads into the chambers. Clunk-clunk. Drops of dew clung to the tops of the yellowed chest-high grass and glistened on the cholla and the prickly pear. “This early in the season, the birds are out in the tall grass in the flats. Later in the day, we’ll find them up in the brush.” Lady cut back and forth and bounced on her back legs to catch a glimpse of her master. Then, at the mouth of a canyon, her head lifted and she sorted out scents borne on tendrils of wind…

Havilah Babcock, a beloved English professor at the University of South Carolina, has often been described as the unofficial poet laureate of the bobwhite quail. “Call him Bob White, quail, bird or whatever you will in the rest of the country,” he wrote, “but to elder sportsmen of the South, this saucy little patrician is still partridge. It is lese majeste to call him anything else.” Matters of terminology aside, anyone who samples and savors Babcock’s writings will be enchanted. Strangely enough, the origin of his grand tales came from chronic insomnia, and he turned pen to paper during morning’s wee hours in a fruitless search for an antidote. He may have suffered mightily, but posterity can feel blessed that sleeplessness left us a bounty of immensely enjoyable and insightful tales devoted to the bird he fondly described as “five ounces of feathered dynamite.” As might be expected of someone who served as the head of a university English department for decades, Babcock was a master of words…

One man made the enduring success of Covey Rise magazine possible—Kim N. Price. The avid sportsman and conservationist started the publication for “the serious quail hunter” in 2002. Through the magazine, Price educated untold numbers of landowners about the importance of habitat preservation. He aimed to tell the story of the dedicated quail hunter and explain what we all as a collective group can do to stop the decline of quail.

Price’s passion for quail hunting began when his father took him on a hunt at the age of 8. It continued throughout his lifetime. Price served on the Quail Forever national board of directors. He was highly honored in 2010 as being named one of the 25 Most Influential People in Hunting and Fishing in Outdoor Life.

Upon Price’s passing in January, John Thames and Kelly Waldrop picked up the reins at Covey Rise. Our team strives to honor Price’s work. While the format has changed, his goals are still our goals. We share his sincerety and drive to ensure that upland hunting is a tradition that will last for generations and generations.