A startling, quick-freeze kind of north wind, the icy forefinger of an impending snow storm poking down into East Texas, set the dried stalks of standing milo to singing. I really couldn't tell where the buzzing plants left off and the shotgun-induced ringing in my ears began, though actually it didn't matter. Through wind-blistered, teary eyes I could see Darr the pointer and Dixie the shorthair, 30 yards ahead in the stubble, locked down on birds, waiting for us to assume shooting positions. Steve Knight worked left. I shifted to the right. Cord Burnett, our dog handler and guide on this hunt at Hidden Lakes Hunting Resort, slid in between and slightly behind us to give him a view of flushing birds. 'Everybody ready?' he asked. 'Huck, go get 'em.' At the command, Huckleberry, the Jack Russell terrier -- like all his breed, short, tough, determined and genuinely comical -- broke from his 'at heel' position and dove in under the dogs that were more than five times his size. Huck scuffled and snuffled and shouldered through the grain stalks, which rattled as he bulldozed his way to the scent. Huck finally poked his nose right into a cock pheasant, which exploded with a squawk from the brown stubble. Resplendent red eye patches and maroon breast feathers lit the gray sky as the bird flapped hard into the wind for lift, then shifted west toward other faraway fields. Knight flung a futile .28 gauge load of No. 8 shot after the big rooster, which simply set his wings and went into a long glide that carried him over a small lake and out of sight behind a distant tree line. 'It's OK,' Burnett said. 'Maybe we can pick him up later.' Maybe we did. Maybe we didn't. We still finished the day with a dozen pheasants, not to mention eight chukar and nearly 40 quail. The shooting at Hidden Lakes, which is in its second year of operation, was brisk, sporty and constant. The Burnett family -- patriarch Billy, wife Kathryn and guides who include son Cord -- have found a way to produce a quality hunt and a special eating experience on the ranch they've put together near Lake Fork, north of Tyler. Billy Burnett is a lifelong quail hunter and East Texan who says he always wanted to develop his own hunting spot in East Texas, a place where he could enjoy raising the birds and giving hunters starved for wing-shooting by drought the opportunity for a good hunt on good land. The Burnetts have planted more than 17 miles of grain strips on the property and hunters work their way up and down those strips in search of the released birds. We never hunted the same strip more than once. 'I've been really pleased with how far we've come in two years,' Billy Burnett said. 'We raise the birds ourselves, and we're getting them to fly the way they should. We're still improving, and next year we'll have our new (9,000-square-foot) lodge finished.' The family also grows and cans much of the food they serve -- corn, pickles, relish, peaches, tomatoes and onions -- and hunters get breakfast and lunch on day hunts, plus dinner when they stay overnight. The day ends around a hickory fire, and birds are delivered frozen in soft-sided cases, which the hunters take home with them. But it's the hunting that's foremost at Hidden Lakes, and it's good. I hadn't hunted released birds in years, but the quail flew well and the chukar and pheasants exploded out of the stubble. We had one covey of quail that were feeding in some timber, and that shooting was sporty to say the least. Dog work was excellent and the best, for me, was Huck. Two years old and absolutely cocksure of himself, the little terrier would force birds out of the thick cover, then somehow extricate himself enough that he could see downed birds as they hit the ground. He was on them as quickly as the bigger dogs and was intent on hauling in the big pheasants and chukar, dodging and dipping his way back in to keep his tormenters from stealing his prize. Back in the warm house for lunch, after a morning of wading through chest-deep water from recent rains and slogging through the mud around the puddles, Huck disappeared for a while. We found him sleeping it off on the bed, muddy paws and all. He wasn't cowed at all by being lectured about his lack of manners, settling instead on Cord's jacket, where he spent the next hour resting and getting ready for the afternoon hunt. And he kept finding birds. For information about Hidden Lakes, see www.hiddenlakeshuntingresort.com. Mike Leggett writes for the Austin American-Statesman. E-mail: mleggett@statesman.com. 