How far South in Calif. have you shot wild birds

C

calamari

Member
Over 50 years ago when I first got my drivers license my mom and I met her sister and my uncle at Mendota to hunt pheasants. My aunt and uncle would drive up from Moorpark to hunt pheasants there and it was a great place for wild birds. That was long enough ago that you bought a pheasant license that came with a seasons number of bird tags you glued around the birds leg. Two a day, again as I recall, and when they were gone you were done for the season. 10 or 15 maybe.
Wild pheasants are gone that far South as far as I've heard or are they? How far South have you seen a wild pheasant and not a club escapee?
 
I hunt Mendota every year, there are still wild birds on the refuge. I've heard around the pixley refuge and Kern refuge west towards I5 there are still birds around, just drive through farm country down there, it looks a whole lot different than here. Also heard of birds between El Centro and calexico and south to Mexicali where wild pheasants are thriving. Also Owens valley is said to have a few wild ones left but besides Mendota everything else is second hand info.
 
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That's good to know that Mendota is still huntable. I understand that they've been planting birds on the Grasslands and South areas for some time like they have unfortunately started to have to do in the Sac. Valley refuges.
I'm surprised about a thriving population around Calexico. It seemed to be too dry to have enough spring moisture when I was through there but I wasn't around there at that time of year.
 
My brother shot 1 rooster opening morning at Mendota which accounted for 25% of the refuge's harvest that day.:( Imo its a really good place with tons of good habitat but consecutive extremely dry springs have hit us pretty hard. The bitds south around calexico are products of irrigated crops and irrigation ditches. The story is the birds were released by the chinese workers who built the irrigation canals from the colorado river.
 
On a good note the ferral game chicken population on hwy 99 through Yuba City is expanding their range every year I've noticed in my travels.:cheers:
 
My brother shot 1 rooster opening morning at Mendota which accounted for 25% of the refuge's harvest that day.
I shot two last year at Howard Slough opening day and that was 25% of the birds shot there. Pretty thin everywhere.

On a good note the ferral game chicken population on hwy 99 through Yuba City is expanding their range every year...
You lost me. Are you seeing more pheasants along the road driving North or more pheasant clubs?

A little Mexicali history.

Chinatown, Mexicali
The city claims to have the largest per capita concentration of residents of Chinese origin, around 5,000. While this does not compare to U.S. cities like San Francisco or New York. The Chinese immigrants came to the area as laborers for the Colorado River Land Company, an American enterprise which designed and built an extensive irrigation system in the Valley of Mexicali. Some immigrants came from the United States, often fleeing anti-Chinese policies there, while others sailed directly from China. Thousands of Chinese were lured to the area by the promise of high wages, but for most that never materialised.[30]
Since 2000, new migrants from China to Mexicali come from many of the same areas as before 1960, with perhaps 90% from Guangdong or Hong Kong.[31]
 
No, I mean the actual chickens that live on the hwy shoulder on the south end of town. The first year we went up there there were maybe 6 or 7 in one family group, this year there were at least 4 different family groups and probably 50 chickens total. Game chickens reproduce quickly ( I know from experience). If I don't find the nest's of mine and collect the eggs they will pull off 3 broods a year without any help from me or the security of a coop.
 
Well, if you happen to get one stuck in your grill you know what they say about chickens. They taste just like pheasant.
 
quail hound said:
Also Owens valley is said to have a few wild ones left but besides Mendota everything else is second hand info.
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The Owens Valley has none and hasn't for a long, long time. I grew up there and spent a great deal of time traveling all over that place in search of game or fish (as you may know, it's almost all public land there). I've never seen one in my entire lifetime. There's really been no huntable population since the 1950s.

Maybe a couple of escapees from the club in Lone Pine pulled off a brood of chicks somehow, but that's the only possibility.
 
ditchparrot19 said:
The Owens Valley has none and hasn't for a long, long time. I grew up there and spent a great deal of time traveling all over that place in search of game or fish (as you may know, it's almost all public land there). I've never seen one in my entire lifetime. There's really been no huntable population since the 1950s.

Maybe a couple of escapees from the club in Lone Pine pulled off a brood of chicks somehow, but that's the only possibility.
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That's too bad. Beautiful area and could probably have some birds if all of the water didn't go to LA.
 
quail hound said:
That's too bad. Beautiful area and could probably have some birds if all of the water didn't go to LA.
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It would have a lot of neat things if the water rights were not owned by the City of Los Angeles. My ancestors were among those duped by Mr. Mulholland a century ago.

On the "positive" side, I've shot a few ducks and caught a handful of fish out of the aqueduct. I've swam in it hundreds of times and had a lot of fun sinking beer cans with a .22 rifle. If I haven't put a ton of lead in that ditch in the form of bullets and shot, I have to be close.

I've also watched some worn-out major appliances disappear beneath its surface, and that was always entertaining.
 
The population of wild pheasants in Imperial Valley grows stronger the closer you get to the border. Another 30 miles south into Mexico the population is better yet as a result of the greater planting of cereal crops and farming practices that are not quite as scorched earth as are practiced on our side of the border. Our population is beind diminished every day as the Imperial Irrigation District continues to dredge and use herbicides in the ditches and along edges. Worse, alfalfa, Sudan and Bermuda fields are being replaced by solar panels.

There is also an interesting angle to Calamari's notes about the Chinese population in Mexicali. As a result of a DFW study that I instigated, there is at least the possibility that the pheasant population in the Imperial/Mexicali Valley may have been the result of pheasants brought in by Chinese immigrants many years ago and there is some anectdotal evidence they were present long before any releases by the DFG.

The research on this was performed by Chet Harte, a former upland game specialist for the DFG. He wrote about this in an issue of Outdoor California.
 
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