Oklahoma’s Quail Season Opens November 9th

While most people refer to football in terms of the Oklahoma seasonal change, that doesn't feel appropriate for 2024. From the lingering heat to the devastating November tornados, it just hasn't felt like fall in the Sooner State... but you know fall is officially here when quail season opens.

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If you told me that you've never hunted quail, I would fully believe you. It's not as popular as it used to be because quail numbers took a nose-dive this century due to all sorts of supposed reasons. From agricultural herbicides to the willing introduction of whitetail deer and subsequent predators that prey on them, quail have been hard to find for a long time.

Decades ago you could walk any fenceline or hedgerow in Oklahoma and flush out a limit of these tasty little birds. Not so much in my lifetime. They were mostly absent across the state from the mid-90s to the early 20-teens, but they are bouncing back.

While 2024 may seem like it would have been a horrible year for wild birds, it seems the drought wasn't as hard on them as it was on everything else.

Did we get enough rain? No... but the rains fell at the right times to create ideal conditions. July 2024 was shockingly wet and cool, and that's when the bulk of the underbrush took off.

The vegetation may be crispy now, but it provided the perfect habitat for quail. The rains provided just enough brush for quail to hide and raise a covey in along with enough seeds to forage for food.

While you may not have much luck on the public lands offered to us all throughout the state, the private lands and leases are producing more quail than they have in the last twenty years. You should be able to bag a limit with your buddies in an afternoon.

Chicken of the Prairie

If you've never eaten quail, I don't know how to describe the taste. It's a dark meat, but it tastes like chicken. So it's pretty delicious any which way you cook it, you'll just need five or six wild birds to make a meal for yourself.

If you'd like to try your hand at quail hunting, locate the land you want to hunt. Get out there as early as possible, walk along the cover. Wild quail are pretty quick to flush out making a challenging target. It really helps to have a good bird dog too, but as a kid who grew up as the family bird dog, dogs aren't necessary.

If you can't opt into public lands, or you don't want to mess with the hassle of every other quail hunter wiping an area out, there are several quail reserves around the state that will rent you prime quail land for a few hours. They'll even sell you the quail you want and put them in the field for you.

Is it sportsmanlike to have a bagged hunt like that? That's debatable... but quail have been in such short supply for so many years, it's better than not seeing any at all.

If you'd rather skip the hunt and go straight to the meal, that's an option in Oklahoma too. People who raise quail are easy to find through Facebook and Google, and they'll usually let you buy your birds if you'd prefer.

Happy hunting. All the details of the quail season can be found here.