Quail Opener: Goose Eggs & Redemption

Well, quail season has opened and it will continue to be open until February 7th. The temperatures outside this time of year are still a little warm here in Southern Arizona, but sunrise is still fairly cool. We headed out to a spot where we'd knew there were some quail. Earlier in the year we could hear the quail chucking and putting in a large tank that we hunted near for doves earlier this year. We found them but being quail they are incredibly fast when they want to be. Upon entering the tank the quail shot up off the ground immediately with their characteristic machine gun rat-tat-tat-tat wing beats. They proceeded toward thick cover and we only got 2 of those guys (2 was all we ever got that day). We chased them all over the desert floor and tried to follow them but they kept 75-100 yards out making it impossible to track down. In total there were 4 hunters, and two of us (including myself) came home empty handed, but were able to get some shots off. The quail seem to be armor plated. The other 2 hunters bagged a total of 2 quail and 2 cottontails.

The 2nd day: 3 of us went out again to a new spot and we found the quail fairly quickly. Unfortunately bad planning from the night before led to some goofy decisions that rendered 1 gun inoperable and frustrated the hunter to no end. The other 2 hunters did not fashion a plug for the shotguns until we got out into the field and they messed up the magazine spring on the gun which meant it would not feed ammunition into the receiver at all. He pretty much spent the whole rest of the day watching us hammer away on the quail. We ended up with 7 total quail (all Gambel's quail), I had 4, my other friend had 3. We found them in the prickly pear, their craws were full of pink juice and seeds and their faces stained pink. I took them home and cooked them up for my family and we enjoyed the efforts of a lot of work and an enjoyable hunt.

-A.A.