Hey from California Upland.
We spent three days near Hope Valley hunting sooty grouse and never saw one. Alan put up two birds. Peter clipped tail feathers from the first on day one and shot the second on the last afternoon, a short walk away. Both were band-tailed pigeons. It’s our first field report of the fall, it runs this morning.
Quail is opening in pieces. Zone Q2 opened yesterday; Q1 and Q3 open for all quail, and chukar opens statewide, on Saturday, October 17. If the report puts ideas in your head: sooty grouse run through October 12, and band-tailed pigeon closes today in the North Zone and opens again December 19 in the South. CDFW’s zone map is the authority on which of those dates covers your ground.
This week’s lead. The Grouse That Was a Pigeon — how we planned a grouse trip on a bird almost nobody writes about, why two days of country that looked perfect held nothing, why going back to a day-one pin was right. Plus camp on a highway where the campgrounds start closing as grouse season opens, the drive through what the Caldor Fire left, and a covey of California quail crossing the road in storm light, weeks ahead of their opener. E-scouting gets you to the mountain. The mountain tells you where the birds are. Read →
What we published this week:
→ Reading Recent Burns for Birds: The New Fire Layer on California’s Upland Map — the Where the Birds Are map now draws California’s recent burn scars straight from CAL FIRE, colored by age: orange for the one-to-three-year window when the forb flush peaks, amber for burns that are maturing out. Pick your bird, find the counties that actually put it in the bag, then turn on burns and see which recent fires sit inside them. The honest caveat is in there too: the layer shows where and when it burned, not how hot, and not whether the ground has reopened. Read →
About last week’s promises. Last Sunday’s email said a Wednesday note, Reader Mail on Friday, and Peter’s first Letter from the Field yesterday. None of them went out. We were in the mountains from the 19th to the 23rd, and the writing didn’t happen. Reader Mail comes back when there’s real mail to build it from, so if you’ve got a question, a Q2 opener story, or a grouse you found or didn’t, hit reply. Peter’s letter on Alan’s third season will land when it’s finished, not on a promised morning.
Out the door, — Matt & Peter
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