THE OUTDOORS : IN QUEST OF QUAIL : Expert Mike Mathiot Says That If You Want to See the Birds, You Have to Call Them

The quarry of a camera and a curious eye is quail, but it seems an unproductive quest. There are no signs of quail anywhere.

The silence is broken only by the low hum of a thousand bees working the blooming sage, a few birds chirping, a rooster crowing far down the valley, the wind.

“This is a good sign,” Mike Mathiot says.

“Uh, how’s that?” a guest asks, skeptically.

“If you could see a quail this time of day at this time of year, we’d be in trouble. They’re supposed to be on eggs.”

In nesting season, the novice sees only the sun high in the sky over a long meadow thick with wildflowers, flanked on either side by low hills with large oaks and sage brush rising into impenetrable buckthorn and manzanita. A red-tailed hawk circles in the distance.

Mathiot sees and hears all of this and more but, then, he should. Quail are his business. He may know more about quail than quail do.

He also makes wildlife movies. ESPN is scheduled to start his “Outdoor Sportsman” series this summer--the first hunting series the all-sports network has seen fit to do because Mathiot has managed to present it in a tasteful and positive light.

“Hunting goes beyond pulling the trigger,” he says. “It’s not just blood and beer.”

Here in this small mountain community 35 miles east of San Diego, he makes his home and headquarters as Western Regional Director for Quail Unlimited, which is just expanding into the western states and hopes to do for the sport of quail hunting what Ducks Unlimited has done for the pursuit of waterfowl: not obliterate game but generate it for the benefit of future sportsmen.

“Ah, here they are,” Mathiot says, bending down to inspect faint tracks next to a pile of branches and brush, a “loafing pile” he had built earlier to give quail cover when they come into the meadow for water and feed.

“Without that, if they came down here a hawk would pick off their butts right away,” Mathiot says.

Mathiot, blunt, beefy and bearded, straightens up to his full 6 feet 4 inches and puffs on a short rosewood pipe. It makes a reedy, three-note sound imitating the mating call of the state bird, the California valley quail.

“Where are you?” it seems to implore insistently, six or seven times in a row. “Where are you?”

Across the valley a single, anxious note responds: “Here! Here!”

“See,” Mathiot says, smiling. “They’re not gone.”

There are two ways to hunt quail, when the season opens in October. One is to send dogs ahead to flush them from cover, following them with gun at the ready. That way, a hunter might get off a couple of shots before they’re gone.

Says Mathiot: “If I’m a quail, how stupid do they think I am to sit there and listen to this guy and his dog come crashing through the brush? I’ve seen guys yell, ‘Hey, Harry, they’re over here!’

“It’s amazing to me that people who have hunted quail for 25 or 30 years know very little about the bird, what makes them tick.”

Mathiot’s method is to make the quail come to him--in effect, to seduce them.

“I used to make quail calls out of clothespins, but I called ‘em with my mouth before I used any store-bought stuff,” he says. “I learned by listening. The year ‘round, I chased quail. They’re so elusive. They’ve always fascinated me.”

Mathiot--he pronounces it muh-THY-ut--grew up in Rialto, where quail were bountiful in the fields before the housing developers moved in.

“I used to walk through five or six orchards to get to school,” he says. “The largest covey I’ve ever seen was where the San Bernardino Regional Little League park is now.”

Urban encroachment, strip farming, off-road vehicle abuse, pesticides, too many dry years--all these factors have destroyed quail or their habitat in Southern California in the last 30 or 40 years, Mathiot claims.

“ORV (Off-Road Vehicle) abuse has destroyed a lot of habitat,” he says. ‘Plus, the noise they make puts a lot of stress on these birds when they’re trying to breed.

“But what’s led to the decline more than anything is over-grazing (of cattle).”

The legumes and clover on which quail thrive are often trampled into dusty erosion by cattle.

Then there are the ground squirrels, for whom Mathiot has even less use than the cattle. Squirrels search out quail nests and eat the eggs.

“Did some game management here the other day,” Mathiot says, straight-faced, as he drives a reporter and photographer over narrow dirt roads in his battered pickup truck. “Killed 20 ground squirrels.”

Quail Unlimited, based in Augusta, Ga., was founded in 1981 and has about 30,000 members. It moved west only this year, however, when Mathiot was appointed regional director in February. Since then, he has chartered eight chapters, five in California and three in Arizona.

A Los Angeles-area chapter will be chartered June 17 in a 7:30 meeting at the Cockatoo Inn near L.A. International Airport.

“We are and will make a difference in California quail and how they are managed,” Mathiot says, adding that quail management has been minimal in California and non-existent federally.

Quail Unlimited will take a big step in trying to remedy the federal situation Saturday when it joins the National Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in signing a memorandum of understanding to include quail in future planning, such as cattle grazing practices.

“We have to get beyond this notion that if you have a wet year you’ll have quail, and if you don’t you won’t,” Mathiot says. “It can be controlled.”

Quail Unlimited directs its contributed funds and energies toward improving the habitat in several ways, including restoration of the “guzzlers,” year-round water collection sites that have deteriorated from neglect since they were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the late 1940s and early ‘50s.

“We also have an adopt-a-covey program,” Mathiot said. “Each chapter will monitor that covey throughout the year to give us an idea of what’s happening in the whole geographical area.”

Some of the programs are being done in cooperation with the California Department of Fish and Game.

Said Larry Sitton of the Fish and Game office in Los Angeles: “We have given them advice. Our relationship has been very good and our goals are the same: to enhance game habitat and improve the sport for hunters.”

Although Mathiot has lived in Pine Valley for three years, he has never met Bob Turner, the local game warden for southeast San Diego County, and Turner knows little of Mathiot or Quail Unlimited.

“He’s more in the enforcement arm of the department,” Mathiot says.

But they would seem to share a common concern: the irresponsible destruction of game.

Turner said: “There are not a lot of quail in San Diego County. (A lack of) water and feed have a lot to do with it. But I also know a lot are shot out of season. We catch a few poachers here, but the few we catch are not dealt with very severely.”

One he caught with three dead quail was fined $25. A license costs $19.25.

Quail are not migratory, tending to stay at home. Basically, all they require is water, feed and cover from predators. But when a change in their habitat eliminates one or more of those elements, they move.

Because they are so predictable, they are easy prey.

“They go to the same nest every night,” Mathiot says. “In the morning they eat their way down to water, then they go to loafing cover until feeding time that evening.”

California has three common species of quail: the valley, Gambel’s and mountain. The mountain quail, larger, less prolific and with more spectacular plumage, clearly is Mathiot’s favorite.

“There are 160,000 quail hunters in the state, and 90% have never even seen one,” Mathiot says, driving the pickup in low gear up Noble Canyon.

He pauses in his thought to point out a ground squirrel sitting on a rock. “Nasty son of a gun,” he grumbles.

“This is mountain quail country--steep, steep sides with heavy brush. If you call effectively, you can get ‘em out of the brush. Otherwise, forget it.”

Near sundown, Mathiot pulls up alongside the road, gets out, gives one call just using his mouth--and almost immediately a valley quail and his mate pop up on a rock only 15 yards away.

The hen soon retreats but the cock, unperturbed by a photographer or the incessant drilling of a woodpecker in an oak overhead, hops from one perch to another until finally disappearing up the slope.

Mathiot moves down into a large wash on the other side of the road. Hearing the response of a mountain quail, he dons a camouflage mask and flops on his belly in the sand, peering around the edge of a manzanita with small field glasses while blowing on a call.

But the quail is cautious and goes silent. Mathiot finally gives up and leaves.

The quail, he expects, will be there again tomorrow and, if Quail Unlimited works, forevermore.

“We’re stewards of our own sport,” he says. “You should always put back what you take.”