Annual Bishop Family Quail Hunt - 2010

My new brother-in-law Jon, buddy Stephen, brother-in-law Rich, and nephew Tristan. We do an all-day quail hunt each year either at Christmas or New Year's when we're at the Bishop's house for the holidays. It's become our tradition in the past few years. We hunt hard all day and enjoy catching up after not seeing each other for months. We clean all the birds, Regina and her mom fry them up and we all feast. Regina's dad Mike looks forward to the quail feast each year.


Southern New Mexico has a pretty healthy population of Gambel's quail and a covey of Blues (Scaled Quail) here and there.

My nephew Tristan passed hunter's safety this past year and this was his first quail hunt. He carried Aunt GiGi's 20ga single shot and did great.

The quail were thin this year. We only killed 6 Gambel's and a few Mourning Dove. It's kindof disappointing to see so few birds, but having some poor years makes you really appreciate the years when the quail are thick. Below is a memory from the archives. About three years ago the quail flourished. One covey in particular that normally has 8 to 15 birds had 50 birds in it! I callled everyone I knew trying to get some friends to come over and enjoy it with me. Finally, last minute, my friend Todd and his dad Jack were able to come. We hunted for 2 hours, ran out of shells and came home with 31 quail. Definitely went down in history in our books as our best day ever.