As with many relationships in life, the direction this one was headed was not where it went. It began at trout fishing but ended in quail hunting.

I inherited this friend, Mortimer Gaston Allen III. He had been a fishing partner to my minister, who left western North Carolina and, as though departing the Earth itself, willed me Mortimer Gaston Allen III. I wasn’t thrilled with the “bequest,” as I had my own fishing friendships that shared my peculiar beliefs and prejudices. I didn’t want a leftover fishing friend.

And I certainly didn’t want one whose given name was Mortimer Gaston Allen III and who went by “Gooch.” But he was from Mississippi, which was to me more foreign country than a state. And so I fished with Gooch, partly because he had been entrusted to me by my minister but mostly because he had access to private trophy waters that I didn’t. We fished together comfortably for years, never mentioning bird hunting, because I didn’t do it, and thus he never offered it in conversation. But in my mid-50s, I found upland bird hunting in the way some people find Jesus. Prone to excess, I immersed myself in quail hunting just as I had alcohol, cigarettes, and women. With time, I had vanquished these old demons and was ripe for a new obsession, one not likely to kill or embarrass me.

And so I re-stumbled over Mortimer Gaston Allen III, nicknamed Gooch and further known as the Quail Whisperer. Gooch had hunted quail for 40 years and owned a private wild quail farm in northern Florida. He has been its steward, clearing and burning it every year, planting quail habitat and food, and hunting it only sparingly.

His farm is only two hours from his antebellum home in a restored neighborhood near the St. Johns River in Jacksonville. From the front, his house is the Old Plantation South. But around back, it is 40 acres and a mule—home to five bird dogs whose pen adjoins an old garage overflowing with hunting and fishing gear, a rusted refrigerator, and an old boat.

The backyard rings with the constant yelping of those five high-strung bird dogs because Gooch feels it is his right, as a son of rural Mississippi, to keep a pen full of barking bird dogs despite the complaints of his genteel neighbors.

Having not yet seen the glory of this backyard, I received my first invitation to hunt quail with Gooch and began pondering choices of shotguns and attire, thinking, like most men, the better the equipment, the better the hunt.

Shotguns are the siren’s call. Like women, some shotguns are beautiful, some are not; some are slim while others bulge; some are homegrown and cheap while others are foreign, mysterious, and expensive. Holding some makes you feel twice the man, while just looking at others withers you to half.

The weekend finally arrives for our first big hunt on Gooch’s property. I fly to Jacksonville, my starched hunting shirt and pressed briar pants attempting to conceal the novice beneath. We drive to Gooch’s backyard to load dogs, shotguns, gear, and supplies into his hunting truck, an old GMC Jimmy with the faint pallor of its original Carolina-blue paint peeking through the rust and a cowcatcher on its front. The upholstery is mostly bare foam rubber with remnants of fabric. The radio dangles from the dash on its wires. The floor is rusted through where I had hoped to rest my feet. In the back are pails of chickpeas for the birds, about three dozen cans of dog food, tarps, a toolkit, spare tires, radio-controlled dog collars, old workingman’s shotguns, water bottles, and other items I don’t recognize: a shiny aluminum three-dog box is attached to the back bumper. Above it towers a homemade white PVC pipe maze that holds water for the dogs. The effect is less that of a hunting truck than of Thor Heyerdahl’s primitive seagoing raft, Kon-Tiki.

As Gooch turns the key, I pray the Kon-Tiki won’t explode and strew its contents across the neighborhood, giving his neighbors one more reason to complain about Mortimer Gaston Allen III. As we back out of Gooch’s narrow driveway, we lose only a rearview mirror, which is incidental because he doesn’t care where he’s been, but only where we’re going.

Once on the road, the Jimmy performs well. “A brand-new engine,” Gooch tells me. These words birth hope we’ll reach the farm. We are headed for the central part of the state, Branford, a crossroads town on the Suwannee River. Gooch has reserved two rooms at its only motel, the Dive Inn, named less as a protest against luxury than to attract its clientele, drawn here to dive the many clear springs and rivers of central Florida.

We arrive in late afternoon to find the proprietor unable to recall Gooch’s three previous trips in the last two weeks to reserve two rooms for this weekend. He does, however, congratulate us on our good fortune in getting his last two rooms, and for $35 per person, we get two single beds, a TV, and a bathroom, all tattered survivors from the 1950s. But none of this matters because we’re quail hunting.

We toss our gear into our rooms and speed to the farm, arriving by dark dusk, as it’s known in the South, when scant light hides blemishes and reveals the earth at her most beautiful.

We load our guns and, joined by the dogs, begin to mark our territory. Mike, out of the dog box and a hind leg lifted, points. I mention this to Gooch, who tells me to be ready just as five quail burst from under Mike’s nose. We shoot and hit one, Mike is still peeing as we try to find the dead bird. We call to Mike for help, but he’s on a new point fifteen yards away. And then again. We don’t shoot—it’s grown dark—and finally, he helps us find the downed bird. Mike smiles as we load him back into the box.

In the next two days, I learn quail hunting from Gooch and his dogs—more accurately, his children. On this hunt, we have all five. Mike, an aging English setter, is the lead dog, bought as a pup for five dollars. Georgia and Riley, pointers, are young dogs in training. Dixie, another setter, looks like a good quail dog, but isn’t. And finally, there’s Molly, the oldest setter. She was once Gooch’s best dog, but is not totally blind from cataracts. Gooch takes her hunting to repay her loyalty.

Mike hates to hunt with other dogs. If you let another dog out with him, he alternately growls at you and the other dog to let you both know he disapproves of the arrangement. Mike always hunts first, the best dog’s privilege. As he quarters a field, he points quail with such regularity that you wonder if he has some hidden in his pocket, tossing them out as we go.

Georgia hunts with reckless abandon, sometimes near you and sometimes miles away. Riley, a beautiful cinnamon-colored male the size of a Shetland pony, has inferior hunting bloodlines but considers himself a companion. He won’t hunt quartering in front of the truck, the proper place, unless a hunter is out there with him. Dixie points anything with wings: butterflies, sparrows, dragonflies, but seldom quail. I once watched Mike run to Dixie as she pointed sparrows, give her a head nod that signaled, “Come with me,” and then immediately point a covey of quail she had just run past. Although the lightbulb of recognition appeared above Dixie’s head, it dimmed ten minutes later as she leveled her perfect point at a butterfly.

If you ask Gooch, and even if you don’t, he’ll tell you that Molly was his prized bird dog before she went blind. He says he brings her along because she still has the best nose for finding downed birds. He lets her out of the truck and instructs me to watch over her. While Gooch hunts, I extricate Molly from briar patches or fences in her search for the sight she has lost. As the day progresses, I begin to understand why Gooch has saddled her with me—so she can teach me about equilibrium, that the balance is in the dogs and the birds, and not the hunter.

Gooch’s method of hunting is his own. The dogs are let out, and they begin quartering in front of the truck, looking for quail. If one of the dogs is Riley, then you and another dog join him because Riley wants a human companion. With the other dogs, the hunters remain in the truck as it traverses fields, scrub pines, sand bogs, downed logs, and the edges of the forest. The cowcatcher mows down any tree under three inches in diameter, because open terrain is the best quail habitat. The truck goes anywhere the dogs go, and driving it is a demolition derby.

With Gooch, quail hunting is faith, not science. It is mystical, not material. It is not in your blood, it is your blood. It courses through you as the reason you were created, not as a diversion.

I learn this not only from Gooch but also from his dogs, because they cry and howl to leave the dog box when the air contains the scent of quail. Out of the box, they quiver and shake as the excitement of the hunt is enough, the hunt itself unnecessary to fulfill desire. They are controlled by centuries of instinct bred into their nostrils and heartbeats. As I watch, the dogs work methodically to discover the quarry, then freeze, point, and shiver, as if this moment is the only one in time they have ever felt, the only one that ever matters.

Back each evening at the Dive Inn, we tend to the dogs before risking the showers. Each dog is fed, walked, lectured, and praised for the things they did wrong and right. Mike tolerates me, maybe because I am new at this, or maybe because it is his nature to merely tolerate hunters. He likes being in control, and I am in the way, since I help let him out of the dog box and put him back in, dictating when he can hunt. Riley relishes the time because he is a friend first and a bird dog second. Georgia swoons to any attention and politely listens as she is scolded for bounding off during hunts. But in her gaze, I see that breaking free to run is worth the reprimand and that she understands she has ample time to become a good bird dog. Molly relishes one of her last hunts, thankful to be included, and sniffs for Gooch’s scent. She knows that, but for him, she would be alone in the pen in Jacksonville. Dixie patiently waits to be the last dog fed. She is the least among her peers and senses that her hunting days will soon be memories.

Showers come and go, as do meals at two local restaurants and the mildly cold Florida winter nights warmed by scotch. We sit outside the Dive Inn and watch aimless travelers appear from nowhere and drift through to no place. I wonder what they’re doing here, because many aren’t divers, but quickly decide I’m better off not knowing.

And then Gooch retires after once again speaking to and touching each dog.

I think about him, my thoughts aided or confused by swirling puffs from a cheap cigar and my third, last scotch. Who is this man, this Quail Whisperer? What is he doing here on God’s Earth? Why is he working so tirelessly to create wild quail habitat on 200 acres of sandy hills near a wisp of a town in central Florida? He lives in a disposable society, yet is neither influenced nor swayed by it. While men his age, the believers in these modern times, purchase and consume everything—pen-raised quail and gentleman-hunting farms, dogs, shotguns, cars, wives, dreams, and souls—he doesn’t. Instead, he carefully replenishes, preserves, and tends, holding on to what is around him. It is a gift, which he humbly accepts and carries on slightly stooped shoulders, the weight of obligation.

Week after week, for years, Gooch travels to his farm during the off-season. He burns it, replants habitat, scatters seed for the new brood, and cuts down unwanted brush. He is alone. When he is not at the farm, he dreams he is there. His is a peculiar relationship with these birds he nurtures because without him, they have no life. Yet with him, they are hunted and sometimes die. On his farm, birds, dogs, and hunters watch each other shift in and out of the circle formed by disappointment and triumph, all living wild.

Ask around and you’ll hear that wild quail have all but disappeared on the Eastern Seaboard. Their habitat has been converted to other uses. They are expendable. Except to Gooch and the few like him who guard and replenish what others throw away. While the rest of us shout our existence, he whispers his.