President’s Corner

September 29, 2016 / SAQF

SAQF Members,

Gambels and Scaled Quail opens in AZ this Friday 30 Sep.  We have continued to have decent rain and grass looks very good.

 Saturday 24 Sep members of the chapter along with members from Valley of the Sun chapter and other dog groups supported an AZGFD Scaled Quail Flush Count near Bonita AZ.  Weather was cool with a little rain the night prior.  Jim Littlejohn got Mearns and Gambels coveys up within a few hundred yards of our campsite the afternoon prior.  We have not seen count totals from AZGFD for Saturday but I personally got 3 coveys of Gambels up.  Picture included below.  The grass was not as good here as we have seen around Sonoita and Tucson which is backed up by the state rain gauge showing lower rainfall in that area.
Briefing before the Flush counts

Briefing before the Flush counts

We completed our second gun raffle and membership drive at Sportsman Warehouse in Tucson on 23 & 25 Sep with the planned future dates of 14/15 Oct and 18/19/20 Nov.  Thanks to Nick Besenick and Bob Luce for volunteering their time to help out.  To date, we have sold 50 tickets of 210 we have.  If you have a few hours to help out with this or want to buy some tickets please let me know.  The raffle info is available at www.saquailforever.com/updates/ .
Our first chapter meeting of the season will be at 7:00 PM 20 Oct at Steak Out in Sonoita.  We are still working to fill some of the speaker slots – if you have an input please let us know.  Based on input from members we have purchased portable sound equipment to better hear speakers at our meetings. We also expect to get a projector prior to our Oct meeting.
If you have not done so, recommend you take a look at our updated website at www.saquailforever.com .  We are working to keep it current.  If you go to the bottom right of the home page you can sign up for email notifications to the blog which will give you an update when something has changed.  It is not a spam engine and you can allows opt out later if you don’t like it.
We have provided funds to Pima County to buy material for the water for wildlife project.  The hands on work will start in the November timeframe.  We have also approved funding for a Mearns diet study to be completed by a University in Mexico but are holding funding until the proper licenses are secured from the government of Mexico.
Please drop me a line or give me a call if you have ideas or want to help.
Zack May
Southern AZ Quail Forever
Chapter President