Several people have inquired recently if I’ve been quail hunting yet this year. The season just opened last Saturday and my response has been the same to each one of them that I didn’t open the season and I’m not sure I am going to get to go this season since I have cancer.
The season is open until Jan. 15, 2026 so if I get stronger and think I can handle some walking I will sure try.
My friend Steve Buoy and I have talked about it several times and he keeps talking to me about going, I’m just not sure. Turkey season is still open and I keep telling him I’d like to do that if I’m strong enough.
The turkey season remains open until Nov. 21, they day before the deer gun season opens.
I always enjoy that as well and if I don’t get a chance to turkey hunt it will be the first time to miss in a while.
The outlook for the quail season in the western that part of the state this year looks pretty good from what I understand. I pretty sure Steve got to open the season but I haven’t talked to him since he went if he did go.
According to the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, the August surveys highlighted increases in quail numbers in the southeast, north central, and statewide regional breakdowns. October’s surveys showed all regions up for the 2025 season.
That’s really encouraging. I can remember a several years ago it got pretty dismal but the last few years has been improving.
Recently I was figuring it up and Steve and I have been hunting quail together since 1985.
We’ve mostly hunted parts of Ellis and Woodward counties together, but also have hunted Canadian County some and Dewey County. Our trek to Dewey County was only for one hunt and that was moe than 30 years ago.
We’ve had some really good hunts, some really bad hunts and others that were so-so.
There will be a lot of people who won’t believe this probably, but Steve and I moved 18 coveys one day more than 20 years ago. People might believe that all right, but what they might question is we did it without any bird dogs.
We shot our limit that day finally. It took a lot longer than it would have, though, because without any dogs we lost a lot of downed birds we never found.
I hate to shoot a bird and not find it. The cover we were hunting that day was thick in some places and not bad in most spots. On several birds we shot we marked them down and knew exactly where they landed.
We looked for each bird we shot that we couldn’t find a long time.
But those days of finding that many coveys may be gone for a while. What they are saying about the quail crop this year it might be promising and very bright for the future.