Hey from California Upland.
Saturday, October 17, is the statewide opener: chukar everywhere, and all quail in Zones Q1 and Q3. Q2 has been open since September 26, and sooty grouse season ends Monday, October 12. CDFW’s zone map settles which date covers your ground. Six days out, the most useful hour you can spend is on the question that ends more opening mornings than a shortage of birds: whether the ground you scouted is open to you that day.
This week’s lead. San Diego County Valley Quail: Cleveland NF Planning — Peter’s planning guide to California quail on San Diego County’s public land, built in the order the county demands: the legal map first, the birds second. Four kinds of closure and restriction stack up on the Cleveland National Forest, and the piece shows how to build one legal map out of four sources, what’s left when you subtract them, and how fire writes both the cover and the access. Zone Q3 opens Saturday. Read →
Coming up in California:
→ Fish and Game Commission, Tuesday, October 13 — Sacramento (715 P Street) and by Zoom or phone. Item 11 is a petition to list the Mount Pinos sooty grouse, the southern subspecies, under the California Endangered Species Act; the Commission will consider it and may act. Petitions to allow air guns for game are on the same day’s agenda. To speak remotely, pre-register by noon Monday, October 12. Details →
→ Inland Empire NAVHDA training day — Saturday, October 17, at Prado near Chino. The chapter’s monthly training day lands on the opener this month, for anyone working a versatile dog in Southern California. Details →
What we published this week:
→ The California Chukar Hunting Guide — our planning guide to the bird from a standing start: the Eastern Sierra, the Modoc Plateau, and the Mojave ranges; why water is the planning variable; escape cover; the elevation band that holds birds in October; and what the ground asks of you and the dog. Chukar opens statewide Saturday. Read →
→ Hunting the Overlap: Sooty Grouse, Band-Tails, and Quail in the High Sierra in September — our Hope Valley trip. A September email of ours linked this piece before it was up; if you hit a dead page then, this is it, and it’s been live since last Sunday afternoon. Better than twenty miles between 7,000 and 9,000 feet, Jeffrey pine against aspen, the band-tails that came home with us, and a covey of California quail we let cross a two-track weeks before their opener. Read →
If you’ve wondered who’s behind the bylines, Peter sat down with Ryan Lynton on The Upland Social to talk about coming back to bird hunting after two decades away and hunting behind a cocker in California. Our note on the episode →
What we’re working on:
· Thursday — our burn-scar planning map, rewritten around California quail and the first three growing seasons after a fire.
If you’re heading out Saturday and the closure map or the chukar guide left you with a question, hit reply. We read every one.
Good luck Saturday, — Matt & Peter
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