For the weary business executive, nature can be the best silent partner, offering refuge in a freezing duck blind, a tree stand, or in a field of hiding quail. After the thrill of the hunt, there’s the bonhomie of hunting pals and the promise of a pleasant drink by the fireside.

Hunting also takes deal making beyond the boardroom and the golf course. "… You get to a lodge or a preserve where they have facilities for meals together, and you have an opportunity to socialize in a relaxed and different environment than in a business atmosphere so you get to know people from a different perspective," says Charles Luck III, chairman of the board for Luck Stone Corp. and an avid hunter.

More importantly, "You can find out a lot about a person when you are hunting with them, how they handle themselves in adverse conditions when you’re hunting in cold weather, what their stamina is like."

Fortunately for executives, hunting grounds abound in the Old Dominion. State biologists help manage wildlife in 30 wilderness protection areas, and the state owns roughly 184,000 acres and 15 state forests, all available for public hunting. A variety of Virginia preserves offer total service packages — providing guns, dogs, guides, game cleaning and storage for the trip home. Besides the hunt, lodging and conference centers offer fine Southern cuisine for both small and large corporate clients.

In Virginia, hunting is a ritual as natural as a crisp fall morning. More than 300,000 people hunt, and that number doesn’t include those who hunt on their own land without a license.

To understand the lure of the hunt is to understand something about the romantic gentility of old Virginia. For many top corporate executives, hunting is a completely private enterprise available only to members of long-standing hunt clubs and their guests. Hunts are confined to private property, lodges and preserves, or are sometimes held out of the state or country.

But Virginia boasts a number of large commercial hunting preserves, from the dense forests of the Allegheny Highlands to the tobacco-growing region of Mecklenburg County and everywhere in between, catering to the outdoor spirit of busy deal-makers in search of a quick getaway.

For instance, Primland Resort in Meadows of Dan, on 14,000 acres overlooking the east face of the Blue Ridge Mountains, plays host to a steady stream of corporate clients including banking executives from First Union and Wachovia in North Carolina to Richmond-based Luck Stone and dealers for Caterpillar. The 15-year-old resort, owned by the Swiss company, Primwest, specializes in pheasant hunting and appeals to corporate clients by offering a menu of activities ranging from horseback riding or riding on all-terrain vehicles to European-style wing shooting. Hunters — paired with "loaders" dressed in English-style shooting attire — are driven to and from each site by a horse-drawn wagon.

Like Primland, Falkland Farms in Halifax and Dry Creek Preserve in Union Level offer guided hunts and emphasize southern traditions. These preserves offer variety — fishing, hiking, and riding — but focus on wing shooting. A corporate membership at Dry Creek, in the heart of Mecklenburg County’s tobacco farms, costs $5,000 a year. Prices at some lodges vary by the season and the hunt. At privately owned Falkland Farms, a 12-square-mile preserve and working plantation, quail hunting season runs from late fall to spring but starts in earnest about mid-October. Guests stay at the Sydnor House Lodge. The preserve also accommodates archery and muzzle loading deer hunters and turkey hunters during spring and fall turkey season. Its low grounds make it an excellent spot for duck hunting.

Mountain retreats also offer variety, from turkey and deer hunts to the sporting clay ranges of The Homestead. In Bath County, Green Valley Farms-Hunter’s Paradise boasts 2,500 acres and guided hunts during fall deer season, fall and spring turkey season and and the traditional November to April pheasant and quail season.

UBS/Paine Webber Vice President Church Young loves hunting waterfowl, a pastime for about 30 of his 40 years. He hunts primarily on the Chickahominy River near Williamsburg but also on the eastern shores of Virginia and Maryland. "It’s not so much a situation where you are trying to talk about business, it just happens. It’s more of a relaxed environment in which to conduct business," Young says.

At 67, Luck is a classic example of the corporate executive hunter. He hunts several times a year — there’s Arkansas for mallard and duck hunting, South Dakota for deer, pheasant and quail — and, for the first time, he is planning an upcoming trip to track wild boar in Florida.

Bird hunting is a great way to ease business pressures, says Tom Rowland, a guide at Falkland Farms. "It’s like golfing with a gun … you can get business done while quail hunting. There’s fellowship and camaraderie.’’