#texasquailhunting

The first pointer locked up, the second honoring him, which meant I was moments away from getting a snootful of West Texas dirt.

I’m about 50 miles east of Lubbock on the Guitar Ranch where cattle-punching cowboys seem to be born from the terrain of prickly pear and tasajillo cactus, cedar bushes, mesquite trees and the elegant silver-blue side oats grama grass leaning into the 37-mile-per-hour winds that morning. Although the ranch in Spur, Texas scientifically grooms the terrain for hunting quail, dove, sand crane, goose, ducks, feral hogs, mule deer and turkey across some 20,000 acres, Phil Guitar, owner and operator of Guitar Ranches (which manages ranches across six counties in Texas that combined host about for 75,000 acres for hunting and fishing) adamantly told me from his office in downtown Abeline, “Guitar Ranch is not a dude ranch and never will be.”