Episode #49 Winter Rain Update + Early Quail Pairing

We trace how a record-wet fall and a wetter-leaning winter pushed Gambel’s quail into early pairing, reshaped covey behavior, and set the stage for stronger brood success. Field stories, rainfall data, and practical takeaways connect rain patterns to what we hear and see on the ground.

• defining the cool season as October to March
• historic fall 2025 rainfall totals and key storm dates
• field notes on early pairing and covey breakup
• why green-up, seed, and cover drive breeding timing
• differences across regions and terrain this winter
• quick primer on clutch, brood, hatch, and covey
• three-year comparison: good, dry, then very wet
• research linking cool-season rain to quail abundance
• expectations for scaled quail and habitat focus areas
• safety reminders around flash flooding in washes

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Transcript

Welcome And Show Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to Arizona Quail Today, your go-to podcast for all things quail hunting in Arizona. We're dedicated to educating and inspiring the next generation of Quail hunters. A big thanks to our supporters and proud partners. Arizona Outdoor Adventures, Fathers in the Field, and Marsupial Gear. Thanks for tuning in, and now let's dive in today's program.

Season Recap And Rain Focus

Field Audio And Early Pairing Signs

Defining The Cool Season Rains

Story From The Field: Smaller Coveys

Region Checks And Active Calling

Data Dive: Historic 2025 Fall Rains

Impacts And Safety In Flash Floods

What Wet Means For Habitat

Rainfall Terms And Quail Basics

Recent Years Compared

Why 2025–26 Looks Exceptional

Breeding Timelines Moving Earlier

Research Correlating Rain And Abundance

Species Notes And What’s Next

Closing And Support Message

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Alright, welcome back to another episode of Arizona Quail today. It is Ryan in the studio with Miss Arizona. Sona, you want to say hi? No, she just wants to shake and just had her dinner happy down here, chewing on a nice little cowhoof. Um, I'm having a good time. So, well, guys, gals, I hope you had a good quail hunting year. Good season. We've had a lot of rain, and so we're gonna be talking about rain in today's episode. So I've been doing some research, and I'm gonna share with you some of my findings. So, this podcast title, I don't know exactly what we're gonna call it. We'll I'll get to the end of this recording and then come up with a clever name. But I think something along the lines of winter rain report, something terribly simple. So today I was out on a hike, and I'm gonna play for you some audio that you might be able to hear. And if you can overhear, I mean, if you can try to avoid the now the noise of my dog eating a cow hoof and my other dog shaking. But let me know if you can hear this. Did you hear that? There it is. I was hiking and I saw this all over the place. Everywhere. Little gambles male perched up somewhere. Just the call of the wild. It is the biological clock is k ticking. And there is love in the air. Let's just say that. Love is in the air. So good grief. What is going on with all this winter rain? This is good stuff, is it not? I mean, we've had some good winter rains. But let's be truthful. When we say winter, what are we really talking about? Well, the cool season, let's call it October to March, and Arizona's winter rains, the water year, the baseline. Uh October through March is a good way to look at it. Zona, what's going on over there, girl? She's probably trying to get a couple pieces, a little cacti out. We were out running around. She got tied up a little bit in some cactus today, so she's still dealing with that. But that's what we're looking at. We're looking at these winter rains October to March. On average, statewide, Arizona would get about six inches of winter rain. And again, we're not even done. We don't, we haven't, we haven't even calculated March yet. So here's what I want to do in this episode. I want to do a I'm gonna tell you some stories. So what I saw this season, uh, and some of the impact of the rainfall this for this winter cool season. Remember October to March and quail season runs. It ran from October uh 2025 into uh February, early February 2026. And so I want to talk to you a little bit about what I saw out in the field, tell you a story here in a minute. I want to talk to you about as well um some of the data I'm finding regarding rainfall um over the last few years as it comes to winter rain, and then, you know, some of the impacts uh that this could have on quail numbers for upcoming years and so on. So you're gonna have to, oh, my voice just cracked. You're gonna have to bear with me. I am I'm actually just changing it up because I'm speaking so often and doing so many different podcasts. I got another podcast called Real Life Ministry. I I teach for live services a week at a church that I started called Northvalley.org. North Valley is the name of the church. Northvalley.org is where you can find it. And uh do Arizona Quail Today podcast and then speaking engagements or whatever. So I'm drinking tea with honey in it to preserve the throat. And all the cigars I smoked probably didn't help too much either. So I'm cutting back. So you'll bear with me because I'm gonna be sipping some hot tea in this podcast, and uh it'll be good. So all right, let's start with a story. Well, I'll say what like when I was finishing up the quail season, towards the end, it was crazy because I was going out and I was expecting towards the tail end of the season, like January, and to find super cubbies. But I I didn't really see a lot of super cubbies uh this season at all. I I made mention of that, I think, in a previous podcast. I mean, I did see some decent sized cubbies, but I actually saw bigger cubbies in the beginning of the season, which was interesting. And there's a lot of factors that could make that up. You know, depending where you're hunting, how much pressure these birds have gotten, and all that stuff, but nonetheless, just things were different this year, and I think most people would agree with that. Um I mean we had an epic level rainfall this fall, or September, October. Um, but towards the tail end of the season, I saw birds pairing up early. Like I was doing my call, little chuckle, chuckle. And they were doing this thing. Go back to it, let's see. They're doing this just this little come on. That right there. They were just they were the covey's broken up, and they're out there calling looking for mates. So don't get me wrong. I I've seen that a little bit, but not to the degree that I saw. I'm talking like on the last few days of my hunt, that's all I was hearing. It was like they were they were move, everything's ahead of schedule. That that's just the some summation, the summary of what's going on. Like these birds are pairing up a lot faster. They're gonna be mating and breeding, in my opinion, a lot quicker than normal because we had some epic rainfall. So we also had some serious heat, too, though. So, anyway, so that's what I saw to the tail end of the season. And then, you know, today I'm out hiking and I went into two different locations, and I mean, significant different terrain, too. I mean, I spent a lot of time. I I put uh well, almost 10 miles in one area I mountain biked about four or five hours or four or five uh miles, and then another area I went completely opposite end. Uh one was far north, one was far southeast. And good grief. I'll tell you, the southeast where I was at, there was a lot of quail um calling, doing that mating call today. Uh so that would make sense too if you w consider what happened with the winter rain uh starting back in October and September. There was some serious uh rainfall in the East Valley. So, anyway, all right, this is a break on my I gotta drink some some uh tea with some honey in it. Alright. So let's let's jump into it. Um we can start with what's familiar and then go to the unfamiliar. So let's just start with um let's just start with October 2025 to March 2026. So that would be this winter is what we're looking at. Current winter, big fall into wet winter. So I I think the way to frame this for October to March, let's just say this current winter, let's use the word historic. Because it was an exceptionally wet fall 2025. Phoenix logged more than six inches of rain just in the fall of 2025, about four times its normal fall total, and enough to break the previous fall rainfall record from 1939. Dude, that's a lot of rain. It's a lot, nearly three-quarters of Phoenix entire annual rainfall fell after September 1, 2025. I mean, key record date, right? September 26, 2025, 1.64 inches at Sky Harbor in a single day. It was a lot. It was it was actually catastrophic for some. Like I I'm not joking. I had friends, they um one of their family members died in a flash flood. So this rain, when it comes, dude, it comes roaring through through those washes. And uh anyway, he thought it was a guy who terrible story, but he was had to get to work like four o'clock in the morning. It was some bad situation set up, and he had to cross this wash, and he had crossed previously and thought everything was fine, but now it looked a little higher, and so he tried to do it and ran that truck across that wash, and it took him down, and they found him, but way, way downstream, and uh terrible. So this is this was epic proportion kind of rainfall. October 12th, 2025, 1.97 inches, a daily record. This was one of the main contributors to the record-breaking fall as well, October 12th. So there's like a series of storms that hit in the fall, September 20, September um 25th through the 27th, brought two to three inches in under an hour in some spots. Like uh near Miami, Arizona, severe storms across the valley producing these historic flash flooding. I mean, that's what I was talking about. I mean, I think I think that area around Miami and Globe, he got hit really hard. There's been serious storms through there. Another multi-day event uh in the fall was October uh October 9 through 13th dropped another one to two inches in the West Valley uh and three to five inches in the East Valley, making October the third wettest record uh in Phoenix. So historic. So, I mean, heading into this winter, we had truly historic rainfall in 2025 for the Phoenix broke all-time fall record rainfall with over six inches in three months, two huge pulses, big pulses, did the heavy lifting around 1.6 on September 26th, and another two inches October 12th, plus a multi-day tropical fed uh event in mid-October dumped like three to five inches over parts of the East Valley. So winter 2025, 2026, so far, because so much rain fell in September, October, the cool season into early 2026 running notably wet, right? In the central deserts, we're seeing that. And then statewide cool season totals are tracking above normal through at least late winter through final October, March numbers, though. I mean, we know, are still yet to be determined. So overall, I mean, I think the way to think about it is for quail habitat 2020, 2026 cool season has been a gift. I mean, coming off of a record wet fall winter storms have kept much of Arizona on the wetter than normal side. I was all throughout the desert today, and we just had a rain last night. And uh doesn't matter if you were in the north or in the East uh central Phoenix area, Central Arizona, we had a nice little showers. So anyway, I mean I think there's some good stuff that is happening, and so um, you know, when I'm talking about a cool season, I'm talking about basically the winter half of the year when it's cooler and the storms are here, not the monsoon thunderstorms, but the cooler part. So um so yeah, October to March. It's a cool season. Um, and so that's what I'm talking about. So cool seasons generally that's fall through the spring. It really drives from stream flow, soy soil moisture, and rangeland response before the summer monsoon kicks in. So when I said cool season, I meant again October through March winter storm period as opposed to June, September monsoon. So when you're hearing people talk about that, you know, when it comes to uh desert birds, it's typically referencing that October-March time frame as the cool season, winter rains. Okay, let's go back a couple of years. So I started with this this wet season that we're in right now, so it's looking good. At the time of this recording, I mean, we're talking like it is today. Uh, we're looking at this time frame. It's late. Oh my goodness, late February. So we got uh we got another month, man. So this would be good. Lord willing, we are moving out of a drought into a wet season. And so last few years, let's go back. And uh let's go back to 2023, 2024. So typically, if you have a couple wet winters in a row, and I say a couple, I mean let's just say a few and then clarify like three. Um that's where you can really start to see a significant impact on quail numbers in a good way. And what I mean by quail numbers, let me give you some quail terms real quick. Um there's a clutch, there's brood, there's hatch, there's covey. So a clutch is like a batch of eggs a hen lays in one nesting attempt, you know, usually around a dozen for for like gambles and scaled quail. Um a brood is like the family group of chicks with the adults caring for one another from the hatch uh through that first week's life and whatnot. And then the the hatch is actually the like that. That's the the break the breakout moment. The moment those eggs break open and emerge and they peck and they hatch. So, I mean, and typically that's like you know, you can see that maybe around like Easter time frame or after Easter. Um but even around the summertime, you so um and I'm gett if I'm getting some of this wrong, I'm sorry. Um try to do my best on it. Uh but a covey is a social group of quail, usually 10 to 20 birds, formed when separate broods and adults bunch up in late summer and fall for the non-breeding season. It's like a crew, a crew of folks. So, anyway, all right, let's jump into the years. October 2023, 2024. I'm just gonna be brief. 2023 and 2024 winter was um it was decent. It wasn't like awesome, but it was a decent year, not monster year, but enough extra moisture to actually cover the landscape. During that time frame, there was a statewide total of about 6.4 inches. That's roughly actually a quarter inch above the long-term average of 6.12. So it was a just a touch on the wetter side. So anyway, we'll just call that a good year for winter rain. 2024 to 2025. You you you know it's coming. Um, it was dry, very dry. Winter started dry uh with storms mostly missing the lower deserts early on. We didn't get completely skunked, but overall it totally was drier than normal for many hunters in central Arizona, western Arizona. So anyway, uh yeah, I mean, I think Phoenix was very dry uh January and February 2025, then a little closer to normal in March and essentially on par for average for March there. So again, I think it's when you look at the October 2024, 2025. Uh last year's rainfall. It was just you can just say it was dry. Drier than normal. So then again. So kind of what you got is you've got uh well you've got a good year. If we're calculating three years and we start back uh 2023, you got a I'm gonna call it a good year. It wasn't great, but it was good. Then you have a bad year, and then this year, I think we're gonna have a great year for winter rain. So uh so what does that mean? Well, let's go back to this year, October 25, 2026. Again, it's historic fall. I mean that you just have to just embrace what it was. It was historic levels of rainfall. So historic fall in 2025, all time records were broken. Two huge pulses though, very strong. It's September 26th and October 12th, just massive amounts of rain. Um so because so much rain fell, September, October, the cool season into early 2026 was notably wet through the central deserts. I mean, you saw green ups everywhere. And so I think for quail habitat, it's I think it's just gonna just set up for strong green ups and brood cover for these quail chicks, and it's gonna provide a lot of positive stuff. So what we're seeing right now is in my assessment, is just the front edge of the breeding season kicking off early. It's just like everything just started earlier, like a month earlier or more. So, anyway, normal gamels, you know, in behavior, gamble quail typically break out into winter cubbies and pair up from late winter into early spring, uh, with main breeding season usually running late February. That's where we're at through early July. But, you know, notice I said it generally runs late February, but I'm telling you, my friends, I was seeing pairing up happening in late January. Okay. A few moments later. I'm telling you, that's what I was seeing. And by the time the tail end of the season came, early February, dude, I I was that's all I was hearing were these birds just making that call. And so here it is again. I'm gonna play it for ya. I'm like calling my quail call. Oh shoot, I got it on mute. I'm like calling my quail call. And I'm hearing the I'm hearing G solo callbacks, and then I'd find a big old male gambles quail sitting up just looking for a lover. So anyway, everything just kicked off early, man. So it's good stuff. So seeing pairs in early to mid February actually isn't crazy biologically. That's all. Because again, like what happened is well, I mean, like, we just had so much green up and so much early rainfall that the habitat moisture just really opened up a window for nesting and brooding and for pairing up. I mean, it just kind of I think it just kind of helped everything out to get going. So I think what could happen is is actually we have some healthier, stronger chicks in the summer when it's really hot and dry. And I think we're gonna have just more birds, stronger birds, healthier birds as we go into next season. So, anyway, that's my two cents on that, and um yeah, um, we'll see what happens. So, anyway, so yeah, seeing pears out there, I mean, go check it out and go listen to them. I think multiple studies um sh show, and I've done some stuff with A Z Quail, show that Gamble's numbers and hunting success are tightly tied to October through March rainfall. I mean, I'm holding a book right now, Hunting Arizona Small Game, Randy Babb. He does a lot of great work. Check his resources out, find out more of this information through books like that. You know. So, according to this research right here, one Arizona analysis found harvest and abundance strongly correlated with total October through March precipitation and lots of rain means more gambles quail. Period. So I we've had an exceptionally wet fall and early cool season rain, so that's good. Record wet fall 2025, Central Deserts, Phoenix area, more than four times the normal fall rainfall records. Again, the big big dates were September 26th, October 12th. And that kind of early abundant moisture just drives these winter green ups in the seed and the forb in production, and it boosts body condition and can move birds into pair and start reproductive behavior earlier and more strongly. So what we're seeing, given the wet setup, is gambles pairing in early February. Um, you know, in late January, they're breaking into breaking cubies up and forming breeding patterns and pairs just a bit ahead of schedule of what we're used to. And again, it was cued by the cue was strong winter habitat conditions. So it's very plausible that many pairs are courting, if not mating. And so right now. And for some of you are like, what the heck? You're nerding out. I think you did kind of it's kind of cool though. So, anyway, I'll have some experts on the podcast another time. And I've had them on here many times, these Arizona Gaming Fish Biologist guys, to talk about all this stuff. So, anyway, with all the cool season moisture this year, our gambles, I think, they're ahead of schedule. I I think I could say the same about scaled quail, which would be good for scaled quail. Typically, these birds respond in very similar conditions. Uh the merged quail, it's another story, another podcast, another time. They they operate on different schedules. So, again, I was already seeing Covey break up and birds pairing up in late January, early February. And now I'm seeing them all over the place. So, get ready. Cause it is happening. I think we are in for some good news ahead. So I'll come back to you. Well, that makes it it all I've got for you this time. We'll see you soon.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

Thanks for listening in. How further our work, please consider making a tax-deductible gift. Visit us online at azquiltoday.com and be sure to follow us on social media for the latest information and updates. Remember to get outside.