June Bailey was born on the fourth of June 1945, the last of 11 children born to Jim and Martha Bailey.
He made his debut just after daybreak on a morning that smelled of woodsmoke and honeysuckle and freshly turned soil, and sounded like chickens and cows and neighbors coming and going and screen doors slamming just outside the room where his mother lay.
According to his momma, the first sound that he heard was the call of a bobwhite quail that sifted in from the garden’s edge and through the open window of the tilted clapboard house where she brought him into the world. It was a sound as pure as the summer morning and as much a part of home as grits and gravy and handmade feather pillows and the dog that slept under the front porch.
Shortly after the doctor slapped his behind, the boy was formally named William Nash Bailey. But, as you would expect, there was a fair degree of difficulty keeping up with names in the Bailey house, so Antsy, the robust black lady that helped Martha take care of the young’uns, just dubbed him “the June baby.” And for the rest of his life, most everybody just called him “June.”
June’s father, Jim, was a farmer. He mostly grew row crops, but the 200 acres that he had inherited from his own father supported cows and pigs and a few chickens, as did most farms of that time. Since hard-cash money was tough to come by in those postwar days, it behooved a man to grow all the crops he could, especially when he had so many mouths to feed.
Of course, Jim hunted. Everyone that he knew hunted. It was just a part of his life. A part of being. A mess of rabbits or squirrels or doves or ducks or, best of all, quail was always welcome to break the routine. Truth be told, Jim just loved to hunt. The provender was simply a welcome bonus.
Most of all, Jim liked to hunt quail. “Birds,” he called them, though it came out sounding more like “buhds” when he said it. Quail were the aristocrat of game in the South at that time. They were plentiful and “ate good.” And when a big covey took to wing, they scared the bejesus out of him.
“A little thrill once in a while did a man good,” he always said. And he loved the tradition. There wasn’t a lot about his life that he could call refined, but quail hunting made him feel like there was. A certain gentlemanly code of conduct was observed by quail hunters that made him feel right about it and good about his place in the world.
As soon as June could walk a straight line, he trailed along. And it didn’t take long to figure out that June Bailey was born to hunt birds. It came to him as naturally as breathing.
Read this story plus 38 other wonderful stories from The Greatest Quail Hunting Book Ever. Add to, or begin, your collection of great hunting books today. This fascinating anthology showcases 38 wonderful stories from those halcyon days when sporting gentlemen pursued the noble bobwhite quail with their favorite shotguns and their elegant canine companions.
The 368-page book opens with compelling tales by the literary giants from quail hunting’s golden era, including Nash Buckingham, Robert Ruark, Havilah Babcock, Archibald Rutledge, and Horatio Bigelow. Buy Now
