It was mid-November 1978. I had been on the job as the editor of GUNS magazine for just eight months as I found myself on a jet traveling from San Diego to St. Louis. This was to be my first national assignment, and to say I was somewhat trepidatious would be an understatement on a grand scale. Barely twenty-five years old, my journalism school training and my life-long passion for firearms and hunting had gotten me the job.

Of course, they are also at home in the great state of Texas. Scaled quail dispersion in Texas shows them ranging from the panhandle down into the Big Bend country and following the Rio Grande. From there they seep deep into Old Mexico.