By Jim Matthews

The best time to hunt quail isn't early in the season when the birds are young, dumb and still calling to every truckload of hunters who stop on a dirt road and toot on quail calls. The best time to hunt quail is late in the season, when everyone else believes the coveys are shot out and can't find birds.

Once the season begins, quail quickly learn to change their routine. On heavily hunted coveys, the late season starts about the second weekend of the season. Even in remote areas, most coveys have seen hunters by the middle of the season, and they change their habits accordingly. Add in a little cooler weather, rain and maybe some snow, and late-season quail hunting is like hunting a whole different bird.

After nearly 40 years of chasing valleys, Gambel's and mountain quail throughout the West, I've learned five lessons that have improved my success to the point where I actually prefer to hunt after early-season crowds have thinned.

But snow is the great equalizer. Mountain quail don't like to have their toes in snow, and many coveys will drop down in elevation to get below the snow line. Over the years, I have had my best success with mountain quail when the manzanita patches fill up with white stuff and the birds are pushed down the slopes - and into more huntable brush patches. Coveys are concentrated along that narrow band just below the snow, frequently grouping up into magnum-sized coveys.

Mountain quail regulars know that early-season coveys are rarely more than a dozen birds. They are usually one or two adult pairs with their young of the year. On good hatch years, that can mean there are 15 birds, but on poorer years there might only be six to eight birds. But I have come across canyons and hillsides with 50 to 70 mountain quail in big groups after snows concentrate them.

One time I was hunting a desert wash that quickly climbed up into pi-on/juniper country. We were only 100 feet below the snow line, and there were mountain quail everywhere in the desert where I expected to find Gambel's quail. When I tell people there were at least 80 or 90 birds around a spring, I know they think I'm lying, but my brother-in-law (who has far more credibility) was along and agrees. The weather had warmed up and it seemed like every mountain quail on the mountain, pushed down by snow, had come for a drink that sunny day.

The late season frequently pushes mountain quail down into lower elevations, and there are places I hunt where the big, long-plumed birds are in the same canyons with valley or Gambel's quail. Once, I have taken all three in the same canyon on the same day. That only will happen in the late season.

Last season, I drove up to a spot near a guzzler (a man-made watering device). It's a popular hunting area, and the place had been thick with birds during pre-season scouting. One of the coveys using the water source had at least 60 valley quail. When I arrived, there was another truck with a hunter there and I stopped to talk.

"My son and I got five birds here opening day, but we haven't seen a bird since," he grumbled. "They've all been shot out. I didn't see a thing today."

It was the third weekend of the season and I hadn't hunted the area yet, but I was glad to hear his story. It meant the birds probably had left the main canyon along the road once hunters started shooting. After he left, I took one of my Labs and we climbed over a low ridge, went through the canyon and over another ridge. Keeping quiet, I slipped over that ridge and sat quietly for a minute. This canyon was narrower but it had everything the quail liked - good feed, good cover, water nearby and, most of all, no people. I had found this spot when I bumped valleys at the water two seasons earlier and watched the entire covey fly to this canyon. Sitting there last year, I pulled out one of my calls after a few minutes of rubbing the dog's ears and mimicked the soft, slightly frantic call of a young bird separated from the group. A boss cock answered from just down the canyon 75 yards away. It was the big covey, and there was another smaller covey a half-mile farther down the canyon.

Bo Matthews clutches a pair of valley quail. Photo by Jim Matthews

Birds that spend the bulk of their time in thickets with heavy shade and that rest on northeast-facing slopes during the day suddenly look for different habitats where they can stay warm. South-facing, sunny slopes protected from prevailing winds become magnets, especially if there is good food and cover. Find these places and you probably have found spots birds use season after season.

I have a late-season mountain quail spot that is right near a small community. The main canyon is good after the snows move birds down, but hunting pressure and then cold north winds move them quickly from that spot. The birds slip over to a relatively open but steep south-facing slope that is protected from the wind. It has mountain mahogany for cover and roosting on a slight bench, and the birds feast on grass and yucca seeds. Even though the spot is right next to a paved road, I'm the only one who leaves footprints on the hillside.

I never would have found the spot if I hadn't been willing to look in unusual places that were out of the cold wind.

After the first shot or shouted command to the dogs, the birds know you're there and shut up and either flush or get where they are secure and hold tightly.

Another time, I stepped right into a patch of low, thick brush my dog couldn't get under, and then heard the chirping of a panicked valley quail. I'd pinned the bird under a branch. When I lifted my foot, the bird exploded out from beneath my foot, turned a tight circle and flew downhill. Corkscrewing myself into the ground, I missed twice.

Use dogs. Kick and stomp through brush you know is holding birds. Stand still for a long time next to a brush patch you saw a bird land in. Mouth the noise of a flushing bird. Whatever it takes to unnerve them is how you get them into the air.

I love late season quail hunting, but it's a completely different ball game.