"Classic Southern Wing Shooting at its Best"

The George Hi Plantation is a lingering memory of the Old South.

As mist rises from the cotton fields on this working Carolina plantation, mule-drawn wagons wait patiently for first light and hunters. The mules are tied to posts set in the soil beneath ancient oak trees.

The plantation main house has been occupied since 1855. It has a rich country sitting parlor, a game room, a dining room, all attended by a fabulous Carolina chef and household staff. There are six double bedrooms. The entire house has just completed a refurbishing.

Out in back, the horse stables and rings are home to fox hunting horses, saddle horses, mules and even a Tennessee Walker trained to allow gunning from the saddle. Right next door are pre-war corn cribs and pens, probably built before 1855.

As a panorama behind these buildings, sits a private lake filled with mallard ducks and small mouth bass. Three floating duck blinds dot the water's surface and a small pier juts out, to serve the john boat that ferries hunters to the floating blinds. Just as light breaks through the Loblolly pines, the mallards swoop in, clucking and quacking.

After a hearty breakfast of country ham, biscuits and eggs and grits, you climb aboard the mule-drawn wagons to experience quail hunting the way it was when the South was young.

You set out across dirt roads, the red wagons creaking; the leather harnesses on the mules squeaking. In the box at the rear of the wagon, two of the master hunting dogs happily bang their tails against the wooden sides.

They are just one pair of the farm's 17 well-trained bird dogs, pointers and setters. The mule teamster whistles and clucks at the animals.

You are heading to one of dozens of hunting sites carefully scattered across the hundreds of acres.  After a bit, the wagon comes to a halt and the guide jumps down to let the dogs loose.

Your shotgun chambered and ready, you and your hunting partner start out across the terrain -- some open fields, some wooded -- the dogs zig-zagging about, their warm breath turning to steam in the crisp air. Flashes of brown and white through the tan and brown brush.

Suddenly, one dog freezes on point and the second lines up in back of the first. The guns move up alongside. In the flash of an eye, the quail have taken wing and are off and dodging. The thick, sharp report of the shotgun overrides the rapid wingbeats. And then it is silent again. The dogs are returning with the game. Time to go to the next site.

Lunchtime can bring a return to the main house or a picnic lunch can be brought to the field. Then it's time to hunt again. At sunset, sitting on the porch that's been there for almost one hundred and fifty years, you look out across the fields. Fox squirrels, black and huge and very rare, scamper across an open patch on their way home. A fox skitters at the field's edge. Overhead, a predator bird, its wings wide-spread, circles and looks for dinner.

Inside, your dinner is in the oven and a roaring fire crackles in each of the three fireplaces. Tomorrow is another day. These are the moments of memories...the memories of a lifetime.

There are many hunting businesses that are bigger. All of them trying to recreate exactly this experience.

But hunting at the George Hi Plantation is the original. These are the final, lingering memories of the Old South. And they're yours forever.