Next-Gen Quail Hunting

From our January/February 2026 Issue

It’s a song of the South. Music to the ears of those who yearn for bygone days when the world moved at a slower pace and time afield was meant to be savored. It’s a tune played out in the jangling chains of the mule-drawn wagon, the creaking of saddle leather, the sing-songy voice of the wagon driver talking to the team—all punctuated by whirring wings and the percussion of gunfire. Such is the soundtrack of quail hunting at South Georgia’s Pine Hill Plantation, where guests experience what it would be like to hunt on their own private plantation.

Horses, mules and wagons have been part of the fabric of Southern quail hunting for more than 200 years. Back in the day, farmers would hitch their mules to a wagon, load up dogs and a lunch, and ride along on horseback so that they could move quickly from wild covey to wild covey. In the late 1800s and early 1900s wealthy Northern industrialists began buying winter retreats in southern Georgia and northern Florida—and they fell in love with quail hunting. Many of these individuals also had shot driven birds in England, and they decided to introduce the gentrified nature of estate shooting to Southern quail hunting. They did this by building grand plantation homes, commissioning purpose-built quail wagons, employing thoroughbred horses and taking afield fine side-by-side shotguns. They also had their private chefs and staffs prepare meals and cater to their guests.

As time progressed, such rarefied hunting became even more exclusive, to the point that today it is enjoyed on only a handful of private plantations. And as you would imagine: by invitation only.

Pine Hill Plantation was created by owners Doug and Jackie Coe to afford the public a quail hunting experience as similar as possible to the kind of wild-quail hunting normally found on private plantations.

According to Doug, prior to starting Pine Hill he had been lucky enough to get a taste of private-plantation hunting. “Early in my business career I had the opportunity to hunt a number of the private plantations here is South Georgia,” he said. “What I found is that hunting by horse and wagon can transport you to a time gone by. The pace of the world slows down, and that’s something that’s hard to find these days. Today that experience is only available on private plantations, and you have to have an invitation. Our mission is to offer an experience that feels like you’re at a private plantation even if you don’t have the invitation.”

Of course, providing such an experience is costly. Take the wagon hunting alone. A hunt party of four typically requires four horses, two mules, a wagon, eight to 10 pointing dogs, a retrieving dog, a wagon driver, a Huntmaster and a dog handler. And because the group is constantly on the move, more habitat is required—habitat that has to be managed properly year-round to provide the authentic covey-rise shooting that private plantations are known for.

According to Doug: “The historical reason for hunting by horse and wagon was that you began at the estate house and might go a few miles to the back reaches of the estate to hunt. And then with hunting wild birds, it’s not like they put-and-take places where you hunt 30 or 40 acres in a day and you go 30 to 50 yards and find where they’ve put out three or four birds, and then another 30 to 50 yards and you find two more. [At Pine Hill] you go pretty good distances from wild covey to wild covey. We’ll cover 250 to 300 acres in a day. And so the horseback and mule-drawn wagon are very practical in that they convey you quickly from covey find to covey find.”

In 2003, having built and sold several successful electrical businesses in Atlanta and having hunted quail for almost 20 years, Doug started buying land in Seminole County, Georgia, near the confluence of the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers northwest of Tallahassee. The wiregrass and longleaf pinelands on the western side of the Red Hills region provide some of the finest natural quail habitat anywhere. Doug’s vision to create a private-plantation-like experience included not only authentic hunting and excellent bird bumbers but also each guest group having its own private lodge, private chef and house staff.

Today Pine Hill Plantation has achieved that vision, and the property includes more than 6,000 acres of prime quail habitat; four guest lodges; kennels housing 140 dogs; a stable of 45 horses and mules; a friendly, experienced staff numbering in the dozens; and a faithful following of repeat guests.

Through the years Doug and Jackie’s son, Steven, has worked his way up in the organization from construction helper building lodges, to Assistant Huntmaster while attending college, to Huntmaster, to Assistant Hunt Operations Manager, to Hunt Operations Manager, to now General Manager. Steven began traveling to the area with Doug for quail hunting when he was 5, and he began shooting when he was 8. He now has lived at the plantation for more than 15 years, and he married his wife, Claire, there in 2021. In 2024 Steven and Claire welcomed their first child, Jack.

According to Doug: “I have watched Steven grow from putting in time, to learning to manage a project to completion, to learning how to relate to guests, to learning how to manage people well. He was a great management style. He works hard, and his staff members see that. At the same time, Steven cares about and for everyone who works for him.

“I have started, built and sold several successful businesses, but this is the first business that I have started and built and intended for it to be a family business. Steven shares my passion for quail hunting through our shared experiences, and he has demonstrated great passion while helping to build and run this business. Steven and I enjoy working together. I am proud of his success in the business, and he is ready to take it into the future.”

Last season was the first under Steven’s leadership, and it was a success all around. The fundamentals of the business are well-established and are unlikely to change much as the transition continues.

Groups typically arrive at their private lodge in the late afternoon—early enough to unpack and warm up with a round of 5 stand. The clays setup is just a few hundred yards from Sunset Manor Lodge, the newest of Pine Hill’s four guest lodges. The lodges vary in size, with five to 16 rooms. All are modern structures built in traditional Southern-plantation style and are nicely finished and decorated with an emphasis on wildlife art. Each has a fully equipped kitchen as well as dining and lounge areas.

After a round of clays there’s just enough time before dinner to enjoy sundowners beside the plantation’s beautiful 90-acre private lake. Dinner, prepared in each lodge by a private chef, might be fried quail with all the fixings, a meal our grandparents would have enjoyed 100 years ago. Much has changed in the South during the past century, but as long as fried quail is on the menu, the South is still the South. Each group receives a menu in advance of its stay from which the host selects each evening’s entrée and dessert. The chef then prepares dinners to order and serves them in the private dining room.

Mornings dawn bright and cool during quail season, often with a slight breeze from the northwest—ideal for dog noses. After enjoying a big Southern breakfast, guests head to the fields to find the Huntmasters waiting with dogs and horses. Hunting at Pine Hill is conducted from beautifully maintained mule-drawn wagons. The guides hunt from horseback and, for those who would like to join them, Tennessee Walkers with modified trooper saddles are available.

Shooting is typically limited to four Guns per party, with two hunters on the ground at a time. Primarily, covey rises are shot, with single birds usually left to reassemble and go about their business. There’s plenty of space in the wagon for non-shooters, and the gentle pace of the well-matched mules works wonderfully to establish the rhythm of conversation and the hunt. The muleskinner will have been up since 4 AM getting the mules brushed, watered, fed, harnessed, hitched and driven to the field. He’ll still be working long after the hunt is over doing the same things in reverse.

The pointing dogs on the hunt are typically English pointers, with English Cockers or Labrador retrievers performing retrieving duties. The guides change pairs of pointers every hour or so, hunting three to four pairs each morning and afternoon. The pointers are steady to wing & shot, and once birds are down, the retriever is called from the wagon to do its job. The dogwork is consistently excellent, fueled no doubt by the abundant coveys on which to practice.

“When you’re working the dogs,” Doug said, “they are ranging and casting off the Huntmaster’s lead horse. So what the Huntmaster does is zig and zag through the woods, encouraging the pointers to range and cast and cover ground effectively. If you were to drive a mechanical conveyance through the woods like that, you’d absolutely beat up the cover and destroy the habitat. Which is why the horse is perfect. So even today it’s very practical but rooted in history and tradition.”

And the bird numbers really are impressive. It’s not unusual to find the first covey—often 20 birds or more—within the first 300 to 600 yards of the starting point, and then to find another a few hundred yards farther on. These aren’t newly released birds either. Where they’re found is where they live. Pine Hill’s coveys rely on a substantial wildbird population, which flourishes in the wiregrass cover. The wiregrass and other native grasses provide plenty of seeds for the quail to eat, and Pine Hill supplements this with periodic broadcast feeding into the cover. The wiregrass also provides thatched, almost tunnel-like growth that helps protect the birds from rain and avian predators.

Of course, a wild covey can’t be hunted repeatedly throughout the season and still retain birds for the following year. Part of the solution is to supplement the wild coveys with released birds. This is a delicate business, and the released birds must have wild genetics to survive. Another part is hunt rotation—giving an area the appropriate amount of rest before hunting it again. And then there is good old-fashioned conservation, where no more than three birds are taken from a covey unless both hunters double on the rise. According to Pine Hill’s meticulous record-keeping, the average take is one to 1.25 birds per covey, and depending on weather conditions, a hunt party typically will find 40 to 75 percent of the coveys in the 250 to 300 acres hunted each day.

Pine Hill supplements its wild coveys in August with juvenile birds, and a couple of times during the season it supplements with adult birds with the same genetics. It’s not cheap—and hunters still have to be careful about not over-shooting coveys—but the core population of birds can be hunted this way and survive to repropagate from year to year.

The result is unparalleled covey-rise shootings. According to Doug: “There’s nothing more thrilling than getting up a covey of 15 or 20—sometimes a couple of coveys together of 30 or 40—and all the birds leave at once. You lose your wits; your stomach’s up in your throat. I see first-time guests who experience that sort of flush and say, ‘Wow!’ and don’t even shoulder their guns.”

As a Pine Hill covey flies, it’s interesting to observe whether the birds seem more like released or wild. Wild coveys can often be distinguished by the way they rise as one and all head to exactly the same place. But if the quail are scattered and feeding, sometimes they’ll divide based on where they were when they flushed. The coveys at Pine Hill Plantation usually fly like wild birds, and they are always challenging. Often when individual birds are inspected after a retrieve, they indeed prove to be wild.

A couple of days in the field at Pine Hill provide convincing evidence that Doug Coe’s vision to offer quail hunting that preserves history and tradition is alive and well. The Coe family is passionate about the land, the sport and the opportunity to share the private-plantation experience with guests. As inheritor of his father’s passion and his mother’s gift of hospitality, Steven Coe is a natural to lead Pine Hill Plantation into the future—and in so doing bring South Georgia’s quail hunting heritage to another generation.

For more information, visit pinehillplantation.com.