By Diane Bair and Pamela Wright
WOODBINE, Ga. — On a Saturday morning in a Georgia Low
Country field dense with thickets and thigh-high briars, we hit the
trail with five other women, a hunting guide, an English pointer, a
black Lab, and loaded shotguns. We were on our first-ever quail hunt at
the Broadfield Sporting Club and Lodge. We were gun virgins. Before this
ultimate wild-to-table trip, we’d never shot a firearm.
We followed Cruz, the English pointer, as he zigzagged
wildly through the moss-draped pine forest and open fields. He was
clearly a happy dog, on a serious mission. “Yup, yup, yup,” Chuck Dean,
our guide yodeled, keeping Cruz in earshot if not in sight.
“He’s getting bird-y,” Dean said, motioning us to quicken
our pace. “Yep, he’s on point.” Up ahead, Cruz was poised, dead still,
in front of a tangle of briars. We took our positions, guns at the
ready. On command, Cruz flushed a covey of wild birds; we jumped; guns
popped. Nothing dropped.
“Those birds scared you, didn’t they?” Dean asked with a knowing smile. “But you shot the hell out of that tree.”
The birds were so small. They flew so low. It happened so fast. It was chaos. And thrilling.
“Break ’em down,” Dean said, instructing us to disengage the shotguns. “Let’s go. Cruz is already back on point.”
Guns scare us, but the idea of hunting for our dinner was
strangely appealing and empowering. And the Broadfield quail hunting
experience, operated by the Forbes five-star Sea Island resort, was an
easy, indulgent way for us lady novices to try out the traditional
sport. But if we had the notion that hunting was going to be a
backwoods, beer-soaked, mud-caked experience (and we did), it was
obliterated the moment we arrived at Broadfield.
“We all have a deep passion for the place,” said Lee
Barber, the general manager, as he drove us around the preserve. “We
hope you feel it too.”
The isolated, private preserve stretches across more than
5,800 well-maintained acres. Old logging roads crisscross through open
fields and forests of live oaks and towering pines, and lead to two
lakes stocked with bass and bream. Wildlife is abundant, including
turkey, deer, pheasant, and quail. The parcel was carved out of the
original 50,000-acre Sea Island Shooting Preserve, one of the South’s
earliest sporting camps.
There’s a kitchen, lodge, smokehouse, beehives, chicken
coops, and organic gardens on the property. While some guests stayed
over at the upscale resort on Sea Island (there’s shuttle service to and
from the sporting club), we stayed in the rustically elegant,
two-bedroom, three-bath cabin at Broadfield, with a stone fireplace and
golden pecky pine walls. We went to sleep under star-splashed skies and
awoke to birdsong.
The first morning, we ate fresh eggs with house-smoked
sausage and thick bacon slabs, creamy grits and buttery biscuits with
Mayhaw jelly, prepared by Caleb Smith, Broadfield’s talented young chef.
After the Southern-style feast, we headed to the shooting range for a
quick lesson, shooting clay pigeons with 20-gauge Beretta shotguns.
”You don’t aim a shotgun,” Dean said. “You point it.” Dean
taught us the proper stance, how to tuck the shotgun into the crook of
our shoulders (so it doesn’t kiss you when it kicks back), and where to
place our hands.
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