Is the government using the “Covey of Quail” technique?

by tiffany cloud olson · 3 comments

 Is your head spinning each day as you watch the news?

DOJ, AP, IRS, Benghazi, Obamacare funding, HHS Secretary and lung donor laws, appointments of Susan Rice and Samantha Powers, unclear Presidential red lines, portions of American meat supplies going to countries with questionable food standards, drones, cyber-hacking…and it goes on and on and on…

So many big issues mired in much controversy.

It’s hard to know what to focus on, isn’t it?

I was speaking recently to a man who grew up in the south. This man who is quite the bird hunter. He suggested what the government is doing right now is called the “Covey of Quail” technique. I asked him if that was some sort of an official term, to which he replied: “Nope, reckon I probably made than one up.”

Then he spit.

I was grossed out yet intrigued.

Here’s the general concept: when one goes bird hunting, the bird dog will stalk a particular bird, stand motionless once it’s spotted, flush it, and then the hunter fires, taking the bird out.

But if there’s a covey (i.e., a whole lot of birds), such as a covey of quail in the brush, the dog has a bit more trouble focusing. In fact, only limited breeds of bird dogs are really skilled at hunting birds that operate in coveys.

As someone who has never gone bird hunting, I tried to apply the concept to something else. Sounded to me like what many animals do in the wild…travel en masse, migrate as a herd, thus making each one less susceptible to predator attack. The more that move as a unit, the less likely any individual will be singled out, attacked, and ended.

So, the hunter suggested that the craziness in the news is mounting by day–not only because so much incompetence and potential corruption is being uncovered–but also, perhaps because the government wants more and more and more to come out…all at once…creating a covey of quail, so that our nation’s people simply don’t know where to focus.

The more in the news, the less likely any one individual story will be fully exposed, vulnerable and subjected to full attack by the citizens of this nation.

This man suggested the information overload will be too much for Americans who have short attention spans of late, and that it won’t take long before the number of stories ultimately dilutes each and every one, causing Americans to pay attention to nothing in the end, and for each story to safely slip out of grasp.

Covey of chaos.

Interesting theory.

There’s a lesson in all of this for Americans who seek answers from their government.

Get more bird dogs.

Tiffany Cloud Olson is the author of Sleeping with Dog Tags, which was the #3 Hot New Release in military bio and hit the bestsellers list same category on Amazon.com in Oct 2012.
Follow her on Facebook or her Amazon.com author page

Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons

http://thoughtfulwomen.org/2013/06/0...ail-technique/