How We Used to Catch Qauils, by James Williams
Years ago when there was lots of hazel brush along the skirts of timber, there were many flocks of quail, sometimes as many as two dozen in a bevy. We would make a net out of flax twine with meshes similar to fish seins, about one inch square. This net was a long (about 20 feet) hollow bag with nice, little hickory, or white oak hoops, which were either colored, or smoked until as near the color of the brush as possible, to keep them from scaring the birds. This long bag net was about as big at its mouth as a common salt barrel of today. The front hoop, in place of being round, was heavier than the round hoops, and not fastened together, the ends being sharpened to stick into the ground to hold the bag firmly in place. This bag got smaller toward the back until it was not much, if any, larger than a quail for some two or more feet, then was some larger to the back end of it, with a strong cord attached to a sharp pin of wood to stick into the ground after stretching the bag taut, thus staking it into the ground firmly.
The bag set, we are ready for the wings, which were made of same material with meshes, perhaps, a little larger. These wings were usually about 20 inches high, and 35 to 60 feet long, with nice hickory stakes about 3/4 of an inch in diameter 18 inches apart, projecting some 4 inches below bottom, and being sharpened and driven in the ground perpendicularly to hold the wings (as they were called) stiff against the quails' attack in trying to pass through. These wings were fastened securely to the mouth of the bag so that the quails in passing along looking for holes to get through, on finding the big, open bag would go like a speckled streak into it, and crawl through the small part and come to the larger part at the back end of the bag, and would never find their way back.
But some curious boy or girl will ask, did the quails go into that trap of their own accord? Not a bit of it. In hunting quails with a net, a damp, foggy day in fall or winter, when the leaves were off so we could see them, was the most favorable time for success. We would skulk through the brush as quietly as possible, and first locate the bevy, usually setting under some leafy bushes, if the weather was a little cold, hovered up and still as a mouse. It then behooved us to be still, too. We'd quietly slip away. If three of us were along, one would watch the birds, and two set the net, then all would get away back, hocking and whistling slyly, as it would not do to come on them too suddenly or they might get scared and fly and scatter. So, if they started to run, we'd watch and try to drive them so they'd strike about the center of the wide spread crotch wings, and, four times in five, we'd get all, or most of them. We've caught many flocks of them in nets just south of our present dwelling not 100 yards from our door. [William James, Seventy-Five Years on the Border (Kansas City, MO: Press of Standard Printing Company, 1912), 179-80].