Mountain Quail in the Sierra's

[woodsman44]

I was on my way home from wood scouting (oak) for this weekend, when a covey of about 15 mountain quail crossed the road.
Grabbed the 12ga. jumped out of the truck and snuck up on them.....or at lest I thought I did....they started to run across the dirt trail, and I started flamming em'
Got 2 shots off and 3 were there on the trail...cool....2 for 3 ,that was a first for me.

A little further down the road a few were comming out of the canyon, flying across the road up to a hill top...bam, got one high up in the air, it hit the edge of the bank and fell down to me about 60ft. or so.

Cooked em' up when i got home...boy there tasty!!!

[Wyo. Coyote Hunter]

  Nice, I have only read about mt. quail in some of Ted Truebloods work. Beautiful birds. Are the common in your area? Ted quit shooting them in Idaho because they were becoming quite scarce.....

[woodsman44]

Nice, I have only read about mt. quail in some of Ted Truebloods work. Beautiful birds. Are the common in your area? Ted quit shooting them in Idaho because they were becoming quite scarce.....

WCH, yes there very common in my area, just loads of them. Can see up to 8 to 10 coveys in a day with 12 to 30 in a covey.
So, not scarce here, heavly populated....there very fast...hard to hunt....steep canyons...thick forest.

You start to see mountain quail at the 3000ft. level to about 8000ft. ish

Yes,  I agree, very beautiful birds....sometimes its hard to shoot them, but they taste so good!!!

In this pic I used my browning 28ga. 1oz of #6 shot, Imp cyl. bottom/ mod. on top