Northwest Sportsman — Quail, partridge seasons start rolling on Saturday

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct erroneous information that appeared in the originally published version.

October arrives Wednesday, and for the hunters in the area that means one thing — it is time to go hunting.

While a few hunting seasons have been open for a month or more, the majority of the upland, waterfowl and big game hunting seasons kick off in the month of October, with some getting under way Saturday.

Quail and partridge hunting throughout Eastern Washington opens Saturday, except for on the Yakama Reservation. Partridge hunting opens Wednesday on Yakama Nation lands, but quail season doesn’t open until Oct. 11.

While the partridge numbers are a big question mark, it looks like the quail once again survived the winter and had a decent nesting year. There seems to be plenty of quail wherever there is adequate habitat, which is just about anything from a few fir trees in west Yakima neighborhoods to the edges of the orchards and row crops in the Lower Valley.

Brood-count surveys by Yakama Nation biologists have found the reservation’s quail numbers in pretty good shape again this year.

“Quail numbers are still going strong and are slightly higher than last year,” said Yakama Nation biologist Nathan Burkepile. “And we saw a lot of young quail during the count.”

This year’s count works out to be about one quail per mile, which doesn’t sound like a lot and is less than 2005 when biologists counted three quail per mile. Compared to the early ’90s, though, it’s an increase of 150 percent.

As far as partridge go, no one really does a population survey on chukar or Hungarian partridge, so there are no scientific numbers. In the past few years, the chukar population seems to be down somewhat, but there are still a few birds to be found in the Yakima River Canyon and out on the Yakima Training Center.

On a dry year like this one, hunters will be smart to stick near water sources for the best opportunity for chukar. Finding a stock tank, a small creek bottom or a spring in the bottom of some sagebrush canyons of the Training Center or on the L.T. Murray would be a good place to start.

Pheasant population brood counts on the reservation are showing slightly fewer birds this year than last.

This year’s brood-count survey showed one pheasant every four miles — slightly down from last year’s one pheasant per three miles, but right on the 10-year average.

“It appears that we had a late hatch this year,” Burkepile said. “We saw a lot of young birds on the routes and over the past few weeks.”

Burkepile said it’s hard to predict, but he thinks it will be an average year. Because of the late hatch, he said, hunters could see a good number of young roosters that have not fully developed their adult colors.

The other factor in the pheasant hunting, both on and off the reservation, is the abundance of corn this year. With tens of thousands of acres of standing corn available for the pheasants to escape to, the early season may provide difficult hunting until the corn is cut.

The Yakama Nation sets its own hunting seasons, and while most of its seasons follow the state openings and closings, hunters on the reservation get to start hunting pheasants a week earlier than the rest of Eastern Washington. The pheasant season opens Oct. 18 in Eastern Washington, but opens on Saturday, Oct. 11, on Yakama Nation lands.

Oct. 11 also marks the opening of waterfowl hunting in the region. The duck and goose season opens on the 11th, closes on the 15th and then reopens on Oct. 18 and runs through Jan. 15.

The general deer hunting season opens Oct. 11 as well and, depending on where you hunt, will run until Oct. 19 or later. With the deer population down some 50 percent from just a few years ago, biologists monitoring the health of the local deer herds don’t predict a very good deer season in Yakima County. The deer have been hit hard by an infestation of lice that causes the deer to loose hair, making it difficult to survive the winters.

Deer herds are doing much better in other parts of the state, including Klickitat County and many Northeast counties, and officials recommend hunters concentrate their efforts there instead of in the hills west of Yakima.

No matter where you hunt, or what you hunt for, you can feel it in the air. It is October. It is fall. It is time to hunt.

• Rob Phillips is a freelance outdoor writer and partner in the advertising firm of Smith, Phillips & DiPietro. He can be reached at rwphillips@spdadvertising.com.