jonesface

Sherman, exposure is the best trainer. I try to take my dog quail hunting at least 30 times before the season ends.

That gun laying in dirt is like fingernails on chalk board my friend! 😩 I hiked 1 mile yesterday and the dog did 3. On this short hike we saw 25-30 gambles quail. All the birds were strong flyers.(Didn't see any chicks) This is going to be a great year. Last year on my September hikes I was lucky to see 10 birds on these short hikes.

That gun laying in dirt is like fingernails on chalk board my friend! got checked by border patrol once on a pond off I-10. They snuck up like I was a criminal! "Sir put your gun on the ground!!!" I said "no, it's a nice shotgun, I'm gonna lean it on this tree" they were mad but respectful. Just looking for some wets that had been reported there recently before I showed up. Never put my shot gun on the dirt lol. Yeah I couldn't put my Silver Pigeon on the ground like that

I've used this same approach on Scaled quail and it was very effective

I don't use them.

Quail calls work for Gambles quail. I use them for trying to locate a covey. After I get a response I head that direction and try to find the covey. They will run and flush ahead of you so you got to move quickly. Lohman makes one that works well as long as you know how to blow into it. Those two mountain ranges have Mearns quail. Those are going to be hard to find without a dog. IMOP

The boys looked like they had fun. I'm glad you were able to get out.

Gambles and Scalies will hold like that if you can break up the covey. Temperature, cover, and pressure are also a factor.

I am so stoked! It should be a great season. We got the rain when we needed it for Gambles/Scaled and are continuing to get it for our Mearns

PRDATR, I use Brett Hall out of Phoenix. He fit my Beretta o/u SP perfectly. He's very reasonable on price and William Larkin and Moore send all of their custom work to him. www.bhallco.com

Ahh man. I would have loved to hear from Randy. I will follow on FB. Thanks

I wish I could have made it. Dang it.

Taking my son up there tomorrow hopefully we can get into them.

That looks like a lot of fun.

Sent you a PM

Pick any unit, hike an hour and you will get rid of 90% of hunters. If I find hunters after I hiked an hour I will go a ridge or two more but this rarely happens.

This sounds like a lot of fun!

I couldn't have said it better than Upland81. I completely agree 100%. I love watching my dog work. I took her out over 30 times this past season. Everytime I took her out was a blast even if I didn't get any birds. I'm already looking forward to next season.

I can understand your frustration with wanting to keep these beautiful birds around to hunt them. I highly doubt though that hunters or hunting has much of an impact on quail population, especially in gambels quail. I would bet < 1% of gambels quail population is effected by hunting and no more than 10% for mearns. What does have an impact on the population is drought and over grazing. It has been proven through much research. I support you in trying to protect these birds but I think it's a bigger battle than hunting. IMO

That is awesome! As stated above, 26 quail at the end of the season is phenomenal! We ended up getting 8 Mearns on Saturday and I thought that was good but 26 gambles in one of the worst years is incredible. Good job!

My dog is just 1 year old. Having a dog will be tremendous help in finding downed birds. One of the hens I shot I went over to where it went down and couldn't find it in the tall grass. I didn't realize I had my foot on it. My dog sniffed it out and tried pulling the bird out from under my foot.

I was able to make a day trip down south yesterday. Started hunting around 0900 and finished at 1630. It was a good day! We ended up seeing 4 different coveys. This is Ellie's and my first Mearn's quail.

+1 for Mark! He's not only one of the best in Arizona, he's one of the best in the southwest. Been doing taxidermy over 35 years. Troy Rose is one of many who used to work for Mark that have gone on and won national awards at UTA. Mark's one of the most easy going, down to earth, honest guy I ever met.

This is a tough year to hunt our desert quail. We didn't receive enough rain last winter and now we are seeing the results from that. We went 2 1/2 months last winter with no precipitation. The book "Arizona Game Birds" says we need for an average to good year 5" of rain from Oct to March and for an excellent year we need 8" or more. A lot of places only received 3 1/2" to 4" of rain last winter and some areas a lot less than that. That being said I knew this year was going to be tough so I did a lot of preseason scouting. This is a year to check out and explore new areas. I'm still finding lots of birds out there. I'm getting into big coveys 30 minutes away from home. Also I hunted years without a dog and from my experience you will see more quail and recover more downed quail with a dog than without. The terrain I'm finding birds in varies from rugged country to nice rolling hills. Right now the birds are grouping up into large coveys and in isolated areas. They are holding tight in these colder temps and if the cover is thick, one could walk right past them and not even know they are there. Good luck!

I went to Utah last week to hunt some upland game with my 11 month old Brittany(Ellie). She did pretty good for her age but she didn't get to point much because these wild birds would run on her. We started off hunting pheasant, which was a blast because we had over 800 acres of private land to ourselves. After the pheasant hunting we went after some Valley quail and were able to connect on a few of those beautiful birds. We had a snow storm hit in the middle of the week and I was trying to decide whether to chase some chukars or grouse. We ended up going after the grouse. We cut tracks in the snow and Ellie would find them pretty close to the cut tracks and flush them into a pine, from there it was pretty easy. All in all it was a lot of fun. Now heading back out to chase our desert birds.