Despite its dusty countenance, the wash teams with life, especially Gambel’s quail. That’s why I’m here. The day before a friend and I drove by and decided to take a short, exploratory hunt.
In the sandy bottom we found a terrazzo floor of quail tracks. A covey or two couldn’t muster the critical mass necessary for this sort of wall-to-wall elaboration. Only a massive assemblage of multiple coveys, a thing quail often do in winter, could leave heavy sign like this.
As I watch the changing light the birds call “chi-ca-go chi-ca-co” across the wash, reassembling into coveys before nightfall. Their separation is largely my doing. I hunted the wash most of the day, first with friends in the morning, breaking up a large winter covey of more than 100 birds, then with just my English setter, Jade. We spent hours working the wash, bumping singles and small coveys from the tangled scrub.
The quail chatter when they reassemble. I can see a gathering covey celebrating on a seam of basalt about 50 yards from camp. They’re ecstatic and the sound of their welcome-home party spreads through the wash. They buzz and chirp and click as they sprint about, chasing one another through yellowed patches of cheatgrass, set ablaze by the sunset sky.
The quail frolic like spoiled children let loose in Willy Wonka’s candied playground.
The birds call frantically into dusk. There’s no such thing as too much company for quail this time of year. Come spring, they’ll separate into pairs to raise new broods, but for now they just want friends to help them make it through the night.
Seeing this reminds me that the animals we hunt and eat have lives of their own, including a relationship with members of their kind that resembles humanity. This is something all humans must reckon with — vegetarians and vegans as well. While I suppose they have a degree or two of separation from our species’ role as predator, they remain on the hook.
Face it, we’re all killers, even those who’ve pledged not to bloody their hands. Even insect-eating quail, though they survive winter on a diet of mostly desert seeds.
There are five quail in my vest, soon to be plucked. I will hunt the wash again in the morning. The limit is 10 and I’d like to make a sizable dent in that number before I’m through. I’m driving home after the hunt, a two-day journey that would be every bit worth it even if I didn’t see another topknot out there in the scrub.
It’s one of the greatest quail years ever in the southwest. The previous two winters were beastly monsoons that irrigated the seed-producing plant life in the wash and feeding quail that sprout up like spring dandelions whenever water encounters desert in such epic proportions.
Despite this abundance, I suspect if I hunted this wash every season for a decade, eight of those seasons would leave me convinced Gambel’s quail wouldn’t live here if I paid them to.
Some of us live for winters in the desert like this, with quail cavorting about like they just found paradise.
I think they are right.