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Arizona Quail Hunting Log - October 2010 Hunts: 01 October, 09 October, 23 October 01 October 2010 - Opening Day Gambel's Quail Hunt
Video From Opening Day For anyone that went out today you know it was HOT. The day started out at 67 degrees and by the time the sun came out it quickly warmed up to over 80 in just an hour. But, never wanting to miss an opportunity to hit the hills and chase some birds we went hunting. We got to our spot before sunrise and found some campers right where I'd planned on parking so we moved on to another location. I didn't anticipate finding as many birds in this new location as the one we'd originally planned on going to, but in the end it all worked out. There were 4 trucks at the waterhole I wanted to hunt and from the 2 groups I talked to we ended up with as many birds as they did.
Pistol Pointing Covey So we stopped near some small canyons that I'd hunted before with little success and put the dogs out. It wasn't long before we were into birds. As with all the covies this morning they were running fast and flying far out. We saw some birds fly out and had a few hold outs of which time shot one. Then we just went from covey to covey for the next hour and thirty minutes. In all we chased 4 small covies around and had some fun. Not as much shooting as I would have liked. I ended up with 12 shots and 5 birds. Tim just ended up with the first bird he shot.
Gopher Snake Warming Up After a short break we headed over to another canyon and ended up chasing birds all around with nothing to show for it. The hike back up the canyon was brutal and I thought for sure I was going to die of heat stroke. On the way back to the truck we came across the above Gopher Snake.
Catch of The Day We shot 5 males and 2 females. I only lost 1 bird today so that was nice. With the heat it was hard for the dogs to smell the downed birds that well and I found myself missing Ice* as she always seemed to turn up with those lost birds. *Ice went off chasing "Gun Shots" during the night of July 4th and never made it home. 09 October 2010 - Gambel's Quail Hunt
Pistol Pointing Gambel's Quail Covey Today my buddy Doug and I headed out to a place I ended up in January last season. The weather was pretty nice, but still warm once the sun came out. We'd had some rains so that had helped cool down things a bit from the week before. We moved up a canyon for about 20 minutes and finally Pistol started pointing. It wasn't too long and we had birds flushing all over the place. Today would prove to be a day of many missed shots. The birds weren't in the mood for holding and we really just ended up chasing birds up and down the canyons.
Pistol Retrieving Male Gambel's Quail About 45 minutes after the first flushed birds I finally got one. It was a young male and all the birds this day would be this year birds. The vets were the first to run and fly and I don't even know if I saw any old birds.
Pistol Pointing Single Gambel's Quail We were up and down up and down so many hills. At the top of one where we'd seen some birds flush from Pistol went on point and hit a single which I missed.
Pistol Watching Birds Fly At the top of another hill we bumped a covey that flew off out of range. A few minutes later at the top of another hill we caught up to them and this time they weren't all so lucky.
Pistol Retrieving Male Gambel's Quail #2 I shot and missed but Pistol didn't know and as she ran in the direction of where I shot a bird jumped up and landed about 10 yards off. Pistol was on it so fast it didn't have time to get away. So I took it. Thanks for making up for my miss Pistol. We chased this covey around for a while longer with no good points or shots and made our way back to the truck.
YoYo on Point After a short break at the truck we drove on to a new spot and got down in a wash for some easier walking. We had walked for about 20 minutes when finally some birds flew off to my right and went straight up a hill. YoYo and I gave chase with my buddy Doug and his dogs not too far off. We chased the birds around a bit with no real luck. Then we moved on and bumped a few more covies with similar results as before. Birds would fly fast out of range and we'd be left wondering where they went.
Catch of The Day - 2 Male's 1 Female It was a long...slow walk back and man was I worn out. Up and down hunting in the warm weather was tough. I ended up with 4 birds, but still had a good time. These first season hunts are always tough but I think they are worth it. 23 October 2010 - Gambel's Quail Hunt
Pistol Pointing First Covey Today I took my buddy Jon out on a long awaited quail hunt. We both had high hopes of finding and shooting a lot of birds. But that's how I always feel at the beginning of a hunt and like most often, I just come home with a few birds and a lot of fun times. We got out of the truck and headed up a canyon I'd hunted before. The weather was nice and even though I couldn't hear any birds (they were really quite all day today) I knew they were there somewhere and we just had to find them. About 30 minutes into the hunt Pistol went on point. Then she moved on and continued to do so until finally about 100 yards from the first point she went on point and we flushed up a nice sized covey. BOOM! BOOM! Did you get one? No. that would be our anthem for the entire day.
Gambel's Quail Feathers My other anthem for the day would be FEATHERS! FEATHERS! But Where's The Bird! I shot 3 birds today that I never found!
Pistol Retrieving Female Gambel's Quail The first point of the day happened at 7:30am. I didn't have my first bird in bag until 9:12am. We chased birds a plenty and shot plenty of shells (each of us almost shot an entire box) but didn't end up with as many birds as we'd have hoped for.
Pistol Pointing Jon Moving In We worked this covey for about a 1/4 mile before we finally pined them down. They had moved up and down the canyon and we weren't going to let them get away. Once again all we got were feathers. I was once again missing Ice today.
Pistol Retrieves Male Gambel's Quail We happened upon the next covey about 30 minutes later. They were spread out along the hill top so we had some nice dog work, bad shooting and ended up with 1 bird.
Pistol Pointing Because the birds were so spread out as they flushed many of them didn't go far so we had some fun finding birds across this hill top for a little while before we ran out of finds.
Jon With a Big Rattlesnake We got back at the truck around 10:45am and headed up hill to try our luck in a new spot. The road up was rough but it would be worth it. Right out of the truck while Jon was getting ready I saw a huge covey fly from the other side of the canyon and land on our side about 200 yards down. We made our way down and about 100 yards out we ran into a smaller covey with Jon hitting one bird. As we were working our way down I saw YoYo get really excited about 20 feet in front of me and almost immediately I heard the Rattler. I called her off, tied her up and Jon and I dug the snake out of the brush. He was big.
Rattle from the Rattler I took this opportunity to use the dead snake and train YoYo. With 3 zaps she wanted nothing do with the sight or smell of that snake.
YoYo Retrieving Gambel's Quail From there we had a lot more action. These birds up in the higher elevations didn't seem as prone to far off flying so we had a lot of missed shots which made for fun times picking on ourselves. We did hit a few and to my pleasant surprise I was able to get YoYo to retrieve 2 of 3 very well. The first one almost went down her through really quick, but with some positive encouragement the next 2 were near perfect. She has a good nose so hopefully she'll be able to replace her mom one day (Ice is her mom).
Catch of The Day - 7 Birds In the end we each had a few lost birds and ended up with 7 in the bag. The hunt was fun, found a new spot to go to in the future and hopefully encouraged Jon to try again! On our way out we had 3 large covies run out in front of the truck. We were beat, but finally on the last covey Jon got out to try his luck. His efforts didn't change our final tally. ∞ Back to February 2010 or go to November 2010 |
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