What did consecutive late-January days in southwestern Oklahoma of a high of 93 degrees, a high of 58 and a high of 33 with a low of 11 have in common?
A full limit of 10 quail per man for Chattanooga businessmen John Wise and Tripp Brown and two fellow hunters.
"They were very harsh conditions for hunting. We're out there from daybreak to dark," Wise recalled this week. "The real hot day was really hard on the dogs. But we did about the same every day."
"Quail hunting was really good out there this year, one of the best years they've had," said Brown, whose wife's family has lived in and around Altus since the Homestead Act of 1862. "They had a six- or seven-year drought, but they've had a lot of rain the last two years and this year I'd say was a record for their quail population in the last 50 years."
It was his and Wise's third hunting trip to Altus, Okla., since early November, beginning with a quest for doves and teal. Just after New Year's Day they had success with ducks and quail.
They stay in "the Garage" on Barbara Brown's family's farm. That's a 20,000-square-foot metal warehouse where her late father kept his collection of cars - 54 at the time of his death - and had an apartment built in.
Duck season was over by the late-January trip, so it was just for quail. Devin Hill, an Altus farmer and millwright who keeps the area's cotton gins operating, accompanied them as usual, and the other quail hunter was Nashville insurance agent Bobby Wagner.
Wise, a 49-year-old builder and developer, did a lot of bird hunting growing up in Eufaula, Ala., while Brown, 51, did likewise in Chattanooga. He graduated from Notre Dame High School in 1984.
"Quail basically disappeared around the Southeast in the 1980s," he said. "At least that was when I last saw enough quail to hunt."
Where they hunt near Altus - within about 30 miles to the east and south and west - farmland is maintained with hedgerows and other good bird habitat like it was in the "old days" around here, Wise pointed out.
"I just enjoy the solitude of the area. It has the feel of a prairie with Indians roaming the plains and hunting," he said. "It's arid and open; the rivers are real shallow; you see a lot of species of animals - porcupines, badgers, jackrabbits, whitetail deer. And you see coveys of quail that reach the 40s and 50s. And the weather is brutal - windy and so cold in the winter and brutally hot in the summer.
"You've got to be a man's man to hunt there," Wise added with a laugh.
He and the Brown brothers began their businesses about the same time in the late 1990s, and he looked to Brown Bros. to do site work for his apartment complexes and other developments. That relationship has continued, and he and Tripp found they shared interests away from work.
In the last 15 or so years they've gone together hunting and fishing to a lot of places besides Oklahoma, including Venice, La., the Mobile (Ala.) delta, South Dakota and Cabo, Mexico. They've taken their sons on outings as well.
But Altus remains a home base that keeps pulling them back.