Plains in the Oklahoma panhandle

Three Days in No Man’s Land

by Chad Love

From our July/August 2025 Issue

As geographical oddities go, the Oklahoma panhandle is easy to overlook. On a map, this thin, remote, sparsely populated strip of land—a mere 34 miles north to south and 167 easy to west—sits perched like a misplaced Tetris piece straddling the borders of four states: Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas.

It is, by any measure, a lonely, harsh and isolated region, but it is one full of history. The epicenter of the Dust Bowl occurred here. Before white settlement, this land felt the thundering hoofbeats of countless millions of bison and the Southern Plains tribes that created entire cultures around them. The Oklahoma panhandle is full of ghosts, heartbreak and imposing space.

But the panhandle is not all barren emptiness. And if you are a bird hunter, what you will discover there are opportunities to chase both bobwhite and scaled quail as well as pheasants across a setting unlike any other. And you’ll most likely do it alone, with just the wind, sun and sky as your company.

It’s not easy hunting, nor is it the most productive in terms of bird numbers (although good years can be very, very good); but if you’re looking for opportunity and experience, the panhandle can provide both if you’re willing to accept it on its own terms.

And that’s exactly what I needed: several days spent following my dogs across that spare, astringent landscape. Hunting public land and sleeping in a tent seemed like a good way to recalibrate and renew my spirits.

Day One

My journey began at a historically imposing yet invisible barrier: the 100th Meridian. Easy of the meridian, rainfall averages more than 20 inches per year and the native landscape is characterized by a combination of short-, mixed- and tallgrass plants. West of the meridian lies true shortgrass prairie where average rainfall drops to less than 20 inches a year. It’s a semi-arid transition zone that, depending on the whims of the weather gods, vacillates between drought, drought, more drought and sometimes rain.

And rainfall is the one dominant factor influencing quail, quail numbers and quail hunting in this country. Get rain at the right time, and you’ll have birds. Get rain at the wrong time—or don’t get rain at all—and you may find yourself hunting nothing more than memories.

Luckily, the spring of 2024 saw rain at the right time, and last November, shortly after the opening of Oklahoma’s quail season, I headed to Beaver River Wildlife Management Area, a sprawling 18,000-acre parcel a few miles west of the town of Beaver, in the eastern panhandle. Beaver River is by far the best-known bird hunting spot in the panhandle; but despite its popularity, if you are willing to walk, you can still enjoy excellent hunting.

This diverse patchwork of native sand-sage prairie, mixed-grass uplands and dense river-bottom foliage is classic quail habitat—which is why I’ve hunted the area often and was looking forward to returning.

Unfortunately, I brought weather with me. Or at least the wind . . . .

And here is where I must mention one of the absolutes about bird hunting on the Southern Plains: the ceaseless, often-howling wind. Truth is, if you waited for the wind to stop blowing in Oklahoma, you’d never hunt. So the only thing to do is clear the dust from your eyes and your throat, pick up your shotgun, send the dogs and go.

Which is exactly what I did. After setting up my tent on one of the designated camping areas, I loaded the dogs and went looking for a secret little draw I had found years before— a long, meandering canyon covered in sand sage, little bluestem and sand plum thickets.

A dog on point in the Okalhoma panhandle

The draw offered no real respite from the wind, but I figured I might find a covey holed up in the midst of a thicket. As my older pointer, Abbey, worked the canyon from side to side, I pondered the notion of “Gentleman Bob.”

I don’t know who coined that nickname, but whoever it was never hunted Oklahoma’s panhandle. You will find no gentlemen bobs here. Western bobwhites on the edge of their range are tough and wily, because they have to be. As if to punctuate that notion, Abbey went on point in front of a small thicket in a finger draw. And just as I started to walk in, a covey of bobs blew out, caught the wind and disappeared in the most ungentlemanly way possible as I shot two holes in the sky.

And that's how it went for the rest of the day. The wind continued to howl, and although the dogs were finding birds, I couldn’t hit one to save my life. Up and down those rolling hills we went, bent into the wind, and I missed. I missed birds on covey rises; I missed them as singles and doubles; I missed in virtually every way a bird can be missed.

We all have those days or weeks or seasons, of course. Some of us spend lifetimes trying to solve the mysterious trigonometry of how to hit little birds flying quickly. But even as I put on a clinic of ineptitude, even as the wind blew sand in my face, I could not help but marvel at the beauty of the place I was hunting—because it was home. I am a product of the plains, and a little wind wasn’t going to keep me from appreciating how lucky I was to be there in that moment.

What the wind did keep me from doing that first day was shoot a quail. And that night the dogs and I huddled in the tent and dreamed of calm days and willing birds as the ceaseless prairie wind pushed against the canvas and the tentpoles groaned.

Day Two

The next morning dawned as still and beautiful as a picture. I was tempted to spend the morning hunting right from the tent, but I knew the calm wouldn’t last. At any rate, I wanted to reach my next destination.

About an hour west of Beaver lies the largest body of water in the Oklahoma panhandle: Optima Lake. At least that’s what the map indicates. Reconciling the map with reality, however, is impossible. Simply put: There's no lake there.

All the trappings of a lake are present, including a massive dam, boat ramps, campgrounds and parking areas. It’s a veritable water wonderland—minus the water. Theories abound about why the lake, which was completed in 1978, never filled. Whatever the reasons, though, Optima now sits high, (mostly) dry and lonely.

Driving through Optima is an eerie experience. Campgrounds and parking lots sit abandoned and weed-choked. The wind moans through empty pavilions, picnic tables and restrooms. But despite Optima’s colossal failure as a lake, it has turned into an oasis for wildlife, including both bobwhite and scaled, or blue, quail.

Optima is special to me for many reasons. It was there where, as a young, bird-crazy kid from downstate, I saw and shot my first scaled quail. It was also where I got my first glimpse of true shortgrass prairie.

Since those first experiences, I had returned year after year, in good years and bad. You will never shoot huge numbers of quail at Optima, and there are many years when you won’t see scaled quail at all. This year, however, I was feeling optimistic as I made camp at the abandoned Army Corps of Engineers campground below the dam. The reasons for my optimism were twofold: One, there had been good rains in the spring, and two, a birding friend had told me that he’d seen a covey of blues there that summer.

There wasn’t another soul around as I pitched my tent next to a crumbling concrete picnic table in the overgrown campground. And after a quick lunch, I loaded the dogs and went looking for birds.

Here is where I must mention a second constant of hunting the Oklahoma panhandle: painful vegetation. Sandburrs are ubiquitous, and prickly pear can stop a dog in its tracks. I knew that Optima had a lot of both but, eager to get my young pointer, Zuma, on birds, I slapped a collar on her and let her rip. And rip she did—before coming to a screeching halt amidst a prickly pear patch hidden amongst the grass. Even tough-footed dogs need boots sometimes, and I felt bad that in my eagerness I had forgotten that. A few minutes later and properly shod, Zuma again set off across the prairie. And it wasn’t long before she locked up in a large patch of sumac. This time the birds didn’t have the assistance of a strong tailwind, and I dropped a beautiful male bobwhite off the covey rise. It was a much-improved start to the day.

What followed was an absolutely delightful morning watching a young dog coming into her own. It reminded me why a dog in motion on the prairie is the most beautiful poetry in all of bird hunting.

And once it started, I didn't want the poem to end. So Zuma and I walked all morning amongst the cholla and prickly pear, the bluestem and fragrant sumac, hoping to get her first scaled quail.

Unfortunately, we failed to find scalies in any of the areas where I’d found them in the past. What we did find, though, was bobwhites. And if there’s anything that softens the blow of not finding blues, it’s the joy of finding bobs. We found them in the brushy flatness of the dry lakebed; we found them on the rugged slopes and benches of the draws above; and we found them in the riparian jumble of a long, dry creek bed. By the time we finished, there were enough birds in the bag to call the morning a success.

A Bobwhite on gravel in Oklahoma.

That afternoon Abbey, my grizzled veteran, got her chance, and she did not disappoint. But it is the memory of Zuma that day that will stay with me.

The next day we would break camp and head farther west, but that night, under a brilliant starry sky, I sat with a gun and tonic contemplating the absolute rightness of moments such as these in places such as this.

Day Three

West of Optima lies one of the least-traveled parts of the panhandle: Cimarron County, in Oklahoma’s high country. The area isn’t archetypal Oklahoma but rather a mix of Rocky Mountain foothills, New Mexico rimrock country and Southwestern prairie grasslands.

And it was to the grasslands that I headed on the final day of my trip across No Man’s Land. It was the farthest west I could hunt in my home state—and the last chance I had to take a scaled quail.

There are a little more than 15,000 acres of Rita Blanca National Grasslands in the Oklahoma panhandle—all of them small parcels scattered across southern Cimarron County. The rest spread across the border into Texas. Like all of the national grasslands on the Southern Plains, until the 1930s Rita Blanca didn’t exist. It consisted of individual home-steads—quarter- and half-section dryland farms blown away and abandoned during the Dust Bowl years, then subsequently repurchased by the federal government.

The irony is that in the years since, the invention of center-pivot irrigation has transformed much of the surrounding area back into cropland, and the grasslands that were once farms are now isolated islands of native prairie in an ever-expanding sea of agriculture.

Up until the advent of the Oklahoma Land Access Program (OLAP), Rita Blanca National Grasslands represented the only public hunting opportunity in the state’s most remote county. Thankfully, OLAP has bolstered the options.

One of the things I love about the national grasslands is the freedom to camp wherever you choose. I knew from previous trips where I wanted to set up, and though it had been several years since I’d been to the spot, when I pulled up, it looked exactly the same.

That afternoon I decided to hunt from camp. Both dogs needed a good long run, so rather than hunt one dog at a time, I decided to run them together.

There is something inherently satisfying about simply walking out of camp and hunting. No driving, no roads—just you, the dogs and all the possibilities stretched out before you. Realizing this, my need to find a scaled quail melted away. From that point, birds would be a bonus—merely an addendum to the joy and freedom of the experience itself.

This was true shortgrass prairie tinged with the hint of Southwestern high desert—sparse and dry and uninviting. Unless, of course, you are a tough, desert-born track star that runs like the wind and can give dogs fits. And on a little bench of grass and cholla rising up from the flats below, the dogs started telling me something was up. Zuma went on point, then relocated, then went on point again, this time a little more hesitantly. But Abbey, the scaled quail veteran, knew how to play the game. A hundred yards farther down the bench, she finally pinned the covey. Zuma, who even as a young dog is the most natural backer I’ve ever owned, locked up as well. And there I had it: the moment I’d been hoping for.

It is that moment just before the flush—when birds remain mere tendrils of hope floating across a dog’s nose—that I always remember most vividly. That magic point at which dogs and grass and sky merge into an achingly beautiful singularity that hangs in the electric space between anticipation and action.

I walked in, the birds flushed and a minute later I was holding my first scaled quail of the season. Zuma had her first encounter with blues, and all was right in the moment.

And that’s all that really matters, isn’t it? No one but a liar or a fool can promise you birds. But if you’re looking for promises or assurances, you’re in the wrong game anyway. Bird hunters know that. What I can promise is that if you are a bird hunter, the Oklahoma panhandle offers everything you’re looking for. That is, if you’re looking for all the right things . . . .

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