Hungarian partridge offer sporty and abundant upland sport. They are found in great numbers alongside sharp-tailed grouse, sage grouse and pheasants in eastern Montana's Big Sky country. Photo courtesy of Patrick Meitin

Nothing in hunting quite matches the subtle romance of upland hunting behind good bird dogs. And nowhere does upland bird hunting offer so much variety, wide-open spaces and sheer solitude as is found in the West. The Rocky Mountain West and desert Southwest provide upland opportunities that are unrivaled anywhere else, with lightly hunted coverts and bird numbers hard to fathom.

This is the best bird hunting around, and these are the best of those austere occasions.

SOUTHERN ARIZONA
Montezuma Quail
The novel Montezuma, a.k.a. fool's or Mearn's quail, is a little understood game bird of the desert Southwest's grassy highlands. Once believed to be nearing extinction because sportsman observed so few of them, it took savvy biologists employing bird dogs to prove that the birds were in fact quite abundant. They are such tight-holding birds that most of us simply walk right over them and never know they are there.

You'll need to get into shape and climb if you expect to bag Montezumas. They seldom venture into river valleys or desert floors where you would seek Gambel's or scaled quail. The Montezuma prefers treeless ridgelines, grassy bowls and high benches from 5,000 to 7,000 feet elevation.

Because Montezuma quail hold tighter than most bobwhite, you'll be hunting in vain to try going dog-less. Also concentrate efforts in areas where cattle grazing is lightest, owning few trees but abundant grasses, forbs and tubers. Tubers are the Montezuma's preferred food, which explains their pronounced digging claws.

There's plenty of ground to investigate in southern Arizona's Patagonias. To the east, try ridges running from 9,500-foot Miller Peak. Just north of Coronado State Park, check out high-rolling plateaus with grassy benches falling away into broad valleys above cienegas of sycamore, cottonwood and live oak. Hunting's good around the town of Patagonia and in forest areas to the east and south toward Mexico. This is all Forest Service land, with unlimited access.

Arizona's season runs Oct. 7 through Feb. 6, 2006, and the limit is 15 birds, no more than eight of which may be Montezumas. Call (602) 942-3000 for additional information.

NEW MEXICO'S BOOTHEEL
Quail Hat Trick
The Bootheel Region of extreme southwestern New Mexico holds much history, few people and some of the best quail hunting in the state. It also offers great variety, harboring abundant Gambel's, a fair number of scaled quail, and plenty of Montezumas in its higher reaches for those willing to work a bit.

The bootheel region is the place to go if a desert quail hat trick (bagging three species in a single day or foray) is something that grabs you.

Gambel's are easily the most abundant and reliable, though a detailed map is needed to assure you stick to patches of BLM (yellow) and state lands (light blue). This is not a place you want to even accidentally trespass. Landowners here are a bit touchy in this regard. Savvy hunters cover a lot of ground, stopping at windmills and stock tanks where water concentrates birds. Gambel's might also be found on Forest Service lands of the Coronado National Forest, on any major draw emptying from either flank of the Peloncillo Mountains, into New Mexico or Arizona, listening for calls and going to them in a hurry.

Scaled quail are found largely in lower grasslands, near water just south of Animas, N.M. You might also trip over these subtly gorgeous quail in the lower portions of the forest where Sycamore or Hog canyons spill into the brushy desert of Arizona (just over the border), or low on Clanton Canyon or near Black Point on the Coronado National Forest. They can prove the most difficult to locate purposely, a bonus for the most part, and generally the trip-up in a hunter realizing a hat trick.