In must-see video, hunter catches flying quail with bare hand

Two words you don't not expect to hear from your partner during a quail-hunting trip: "Sweet catch!" But then it's not often--and it might be unprecedented--that a hunter reaches into midair and clutches a fast-flying quail with his bare hand. And if you're wondering whether the accompanying footage is real, consider that it was uploaded by the Austin Stone Community Church in Texas.

 

Also, the hunting partner making the "Sweet catch!" remark is San Francisco 49er quarterback Colt McCoy.

The man fielding the incoming quail, casually, with his shotgun in his other hand, is Senior Pastor Matt Carter.

"It is totally real," Travis Wussow, executive director of teaching ministries at the church,  told GrindTv Outdoor. "While filming [the church uses creative storytelling, including films, to spread the gospel], inexplicably this bird takes off and stupidly flies right at Matt, and he grabbed it. It’s unbelievable…

"I was there and watched it happen. It’s totally unbelievable."

There was a film crew on site and it captured hunting's version of the "Immaculate Reception" from three angles.

What's not clear is what Carter did with the quail or, if he kept it, whether barehanded capture is a legal method of take.

--Pete Thomas

Comments

[Luisa]

You've probably seen this, by the most excellent Chad Love:

"There's a video making its way across the digital ether that purports to show a "hunter" catching a "quail" with his bare hands while on a "quail hunt" in Texas. It's up on both the Field & Stream and Outdoor Life websites, and the fact that it is up on both Field & Stream and Outdoor Life, and represented as such, is, in my opinion, a sad testament to many things..

Now I don't know the particulars of the video, where it was shot, etc., but just from a viewing of it, I feel a few clarifications are in order...

First, this guy's not a "quail hunter." He's some dude in a backwards baseball cap walking around in a field holding a shotgun.

Second, he's not on a "quail hunt". He's on a planted poultry shoot, in which a bunch of bros and bras walk around a forty or fifty-acre field, quite literally kicking up domesticated fowl that a few hours before were scratching for pellets in a flight pen."

Read the rest here:

http://mallardofdiscontent.blogspot.com/2013/05/this-sigh-is-modern-quail-hunting.html