A weekend of scouting for a deer hunt reminded me of the reasons why I love hunting scaled quail so much.
When hunting scalies, I have about 1/4 of the state of NM to myself and I rarely see another hunter. This weekend, I went to scout out a unit for the second mule deer season during the first season. The unit is pretty big, roughly 60 miles by 50 miles and is about 35-40% public land. What I found was that roughly 2/3 of the public land deer habitat was gated off by private land, leaving the vast majority of hunters dog-piled onto a relatively small area of national forest. The result is not particularly a relaxing enjoyable experience for me.
At $250-30 per acre land prices (without minerals or water rights), scaled quail habitat is not worth the effort or cost of fencing and gating to keep people off public land inholdings. Most ranchers will gladly let desert quail hunters onto their land to hunt. There are so few of us and there is so much land that their is no market for leasing land out to outfitters to restrict access. High-fencing is not a thing. No one bothers to consider idiotic captive rearing pyramid schemes. No Motel 6 deer breeding pens, no auctioning trophy bucks for pen-raising giant antlers.
When it comes down to it, scaled quail hunting has everything that I really want out of hunting, without a lot of the crap that has begun to infest western public land hunting. I can wander the desert to my hearts content. I can take my dogs and my favorite old shotguns for a long walk pretty much anywhere I please. I never have to worry about other hunters getting there first. My hunts are never over five minutes into the season. I don’t kill myself quartering, boning, and packing giant loads of meat. While scalies are fine eating (especially grilled inside of bacon and green chiles), the only downside is that my freezer never seems to fill up. Those little nuggets of goodness just seem to get eaten before they ever get to the freezer.
I don’t know if it’s getting older, getting less patient, getting smarter, or maybe getting lazier. But this year I started to ask myself if big game hunting is really worth it or if I should just focus on scalies and be happy.
How about you guys?
When hunting scalies, I have about 1/4 of the state of NM to myself and I rarely see another hunter. This weekend, I went to scout out a unit for the second mule deer season during the first season. The unit is pretty big, roughly 60 miles by 50 miles and is about 35-40% public land. What I found was that roughly 2/3 of the public land deer habitat was gated off by private land, leaving the vast majority of hunters dog-piled onto a relatively small area of national forest. The result is not particularly a relaxing enjoyable experience for me.
At $250-30 per acre land prices (without minerals or water rights), scaled quail habitat is not worth the effort or cost of fencing and gating to keep people off public land inholdings. Most ranchers will gladly let desert quail hunters onto their land to hunt. There are so few of us and there is so much land that their is no market for leasing land out to outfitters to restrict access. High-fencing is not a thing. No one bothers to consider idiotic captive rearing pyramid schemes. No Motel 6 deer breeding pens, no auctioning trophy bucks for pen-raising giant antlers.
When it comes down to it, scaled quail hunting has everything that I really want out of hunting, without a lot of the crap that has begun to infest western public land hunting. I can wander the desert to my hearts content. I can take my dogs and my favorite old shotguns for a long walk pretty much anywhere I please. I never have to worry about other hunters getting there first. My hunts are never over five minutes into the season. I don’t kill myself quartering, boning, and packing giant loads of meat. While scalies are fine eating (especially grilled inside of bacon and green chiles), the only downside is that my freezer never seems to fill up. Those little nuggets of goodness just seem to get eaten before they ever get to the freezer.
I don’t know if it’s getting older, getting less patient, getting smarter, or maybe getting lazier. But this year I started to ask myself if big game hunting is really worth it or if I should just focus on scalies and be happy.
How about you guys?
PM me if you want to chat more about it.
