Standing there on a brisk morning of the Southern California Quail Opener, I felt the butterflies in my belly flutter about. I always get the jitters before a hunt, especially on the opener, but this time it was different. More intense. Standing across from me in the dark was Omar and Kiara. They were both in their early 20’s. Two practical strangers who I was about to hunt these hills with. On the opener. This was Omar’s first quail hunt ever. And Kiara was on the fence about upland hunting. Observing. Watching. The butterflies in my bowels danced, drank, were merry, woke up with hangovers, decided to wake up and dance again, and somewhere along the line thought it was a good idea to have children, they multiplied and fluttered, danced about even more enthusiastically.

The pressure was on to educate and help along these two people I just met the night before on quail hunting and to show these two what a good time upland hunting could be. I crossed my fingers, hoping the birds were still in the area. I hoped Omar could at least bag one so I could say it was at least that much successful of a hunt. But deep down, I half expected a disaster. What am I doing? This was the opener for cripes sake! I should be enjoying this special occasion of a day out on my own, not worrying about babysitting two kids! How the heck did I get here?

How did I get here!?

____

“Nope. I am not taking you hunting. I am not telling you where I hunt. I will not even remotely hint about where you should even start looking! I will provide no pointers or tutorials! Piss off! Use your own map, gas, and boot leather! Go out and figure it out on your own”!

That’s what I heard when I first decided to get into upland hunting. I was stonewalled. The grizzled old bird hunters turned me down, left and right. Unapologetically, unwilling to help. Stuck up. Snide assholes. So I stopped asking.

My first few years were rough, as I attempted to learn on my own. And you know what? I eventually figured it out after a ton of trial and error. After I figured it out, I said the exact same thing to the people who followed behind me. I continued the cycle. With their hands open and reached out to me like Oliver Twist, they asked for help. I turned my nose up and said… find out on your own! I’m not taking you with me. No one helped me. So you can bet (sure-as-hell) I am not giving up my spots. I am going to the grave with my honey-holes! I did that for years. And I had officially become an asshole myself.

I hunted by myself for years. I turned down every request for help.

I am not sure what it was. A transition with age. Maturity. Becoming a father maybe? Maybe it is every upland hunter’s deep down desire, a pièce de résistance. An urge to mentor and give back pattered in my heart and preoccupied my mind. I wanted to leave something behind. Make an impact and a difference. I fell in love with upland hunting and quite frankly, I felt that more people would if they tried it themselves. The idea to be a giver, and not just taker, flickered in me. I would help mentor people.

But I didn’t want to get too ‘hands-on’. I am admittedly a quiet and reserved person, especially when you initially meet me. I didn’t want to do anything face to face. Maybe I would start a website to help people get into upland hunting that way, but I would draw the line there. That would be the extent of my mentoring contribution. If I could just keep my keyboard as a barrier between me and the public, that would be perfect! I wouldn’t take anyone out or even tell them where I specifically hunted. I did enjoy my solitude after all. And just like that, UPLANDJITSU.COM became a reality.

For the most part, the website was a hit. There were a lot more people out there that needed help and welcomed the articles and how-tos. Much more than I anticipated. I carried on. Wrote. Answered questions. But I kept my distance.

Then it struck me. I was giving a lot of advice and I was preaching for and advocating for R3 (Hunter Recruitment, Retention, and Reactivation), but was I really practicing what I preached? If I never mentored anyone hands-on-like, did I really, actually, mentor someone? Sure the articles I wrote appeared to be helpful and I received mostly positive feedback. But this nagging thought in my head… “If you really care and love this thing called upland hunting, and you are able-bodied, shouldn’t you do more”? This conviction weighed on me. I made a deal with myself. If I mentored at least one person, I would call it even. Squared. My debt would be paid. I would give it a shot and decided I would mentor someone… if the right person came along.

I am not super proud of this. But I vetted people for months and they had no clue. I attached many prerequisites to the required characteristics I was looking for. I profiled every individual who contacted me. I didn’t want to waste time mentoring someone who was going to be lazy or not put in the effort or who didn’t respect and love upland hunting like I did. I received tons of messages. People asking me to take them out or who wanted me to point them where to hunt. I asked questions like, have you done research? Have you checked here? What did you observe? How would you handle this situation? What do you think about this? Typically, the lazy ones immediately stopped messaging. They were just looking for a quick and easy spot to hunt. The persistent ones just bypassed my surveys and asked the same question a week later, hoping I’d cave in. I told them where they could find maps and gave them general areas to start. Perhaps I was not being the best steward for upland hunting recruiting efforts, but that’s what I did. I don’t expect to win any awards for that.

Months passed. I received a message on my Instagram account a few months before the 2017 season was set to kick off. My inbox always blows up around this time of year. Some other lazy dude who wants in on my quail spots. For sure. I opened and read it aloud. “Hey, I follow your page and read all your articles”… Suspiciously, I read on, waiting to see the classic “can you tell me where you hunt” line. To my surprise, I hadn’t come across any questions about where I hunted, nor any hints of wanting to tag along. He had read all my articles, referenced several of my tips, and just needed some clarification on some things and was off to go scouting on his own. Omar was in his early 20’s and was a first-year upland hunter and was looking to get into some quail. I clarified and answered his questions, and even pointed him to a spot that was typically good, an area where I had got into some Gambel’s Quail. All the best, Omar! Good luck!

In mid-September of 2017, I received another message from Omar. What now? I read on and I was sure this was going to be the message where he asked if he could tag along this season and I bet he never even tried that spot I told him about. Instead, what I read was that Omar had been searching for quail in various BLM areas and had yet to spot any quail, even in the area I told him to go to. He asked what to look for as far as quail-sign and possible food sources which I was happy to give pointers and let him know what to look for. Now, off with ye, boy!

After I replied to that message… I caught that ‘asshole’ bubbling in me. What the heck was that? What are you doing, Jorge? I stuffed that old-stuffy and pretentious upland hunter in me back down to the bowels where it belonged and I realize it was not going to get any better than Omar. Making him jump through any more hoops would just be delaying and avoiding what I had initially intended to do. Mentor someone. This guy showed initiative and an early passion to learn. What more did I need? This was the guy.

I contacted him and asked if he was free for the opener. He was free and I invited to take him out to a spot where the quail were a-plenty if the precipitation was good that year. And we did get a decent rain season that year! He brought his girlfriend, Kiara, along. She was interested, but not sure if she wanted to partake just yet and decided if she liked it, she would try it the following season.

I think I know why most people don’t mentor. It’s stressful! There was a ton of pressure! And in my case, there was a lot of self-induced expectations I set for the hunt. Here I was. Standing around with a couple of noobs, one with a shotgun and we were about to test out this theory if I was a good teacher or not! The pressure to perform was exponentially higher than it would be if I was alone on this opener. If I walked out of this canyon with no birds, I would be okay with that… it is something that happens when you hunt and you learn to accept that as a hunter (some of us later than sooner). But no matter how much I conveyed that to Omar and Kiara, and no matter how many times they nodded and told me they understood, this crazy self-doubting cloud was over my head. They would be disappointed if they don’t shoot any birds! I would be a failure! These birds needed to be here! There needed to be a lot of them! Everything needed to be perfect! That was the expectation I had! I was obligated to show these guys a good time and that was only possible if everything performed as it should!

I felt the sour taste of vomit rise at the back of my throat.

Breathe.

My eyes closed.

It’s gonna be what it’s gonna be at this point.

45 minutes into our hunt, my nerves were a bit more settled. We were in hot pursuit of a covey of quail. I strategically placed Omar onto a hillside as I slid down into a ravine where I knew there was a spring. Having hunted this area a few times, in seasons past, I knew that coveys congregated down there and would shoot up the hillsides when motivated. The quail we spotted did their part of heading for the spring and now I would do my part and flush them out. Omar was standing at the ready on one of these hills and I would pop up opposite of him, hopefully, kicking-up some quail his way. Kiara was keeping watch, waiting to point any quail out for him.

I climbed out of the ravine and could already hear quail flushing out of the thick brush. I came up onto a hillside across from where Omar and Kiara stood and few quail flushed behind them. “Behind you”, I shouted across to them. I saw Omar look over his left shoulder, then his right shoulder, finally spotting one of the flushing quail and twisting his body and shouldering his shotgun. His shotgun reported off the hills, echoing. One bird goes down. With that, four or five more birds flushed all around Omar and Kiara. He carefully picked out birds while I shouted out where they are flushing from and he shoots. And shoots. And shoots.

I remember that scene vividly. It was a picture-perfect scene of an upland hunter with his gun raised. Birds flushing all around him. Like in the catalogs or the magazines. That October scene will be forever emblazoned in my mind. Time kinda slowed and I watched with amazement, quail after quail burst from the brush and surround Omar and Kiara. They were quail-hunters now. I felt a warmness in me. It was one part pride. The second part was the beginning of something else I would figure out later.

Even though there were plenty, I didn’t get many shots at birds that day. But that didn’t matter. I enjoyed watching Omar connect with a few birds. I loved the smiles. I was happy to hand Kiara the best/biggest quartz crystal I ever found, telling her to keep it as a memento for that day. It was fun seeing the inquisitiveness on their faces as they examined old coyote bones and as I pointed out quail tracks and dust beds. My heart was full showing them both Omar and Kiara the reverence I had for the birds, even at death. Holding up their delicate bodies with respect, I took the time to show them the beauty of the plumage and the differences between California Quail roosters and hens coloration. It was fulfilling to be a part of their journey. The stress was long gone. The pressure relieved. It was a good day, I only wished I had not been so stressed earlier.

Omar even harvested a cottontail rabbit and I instructed him how to skin it out. That lesson also turned out to be a PSA for botflies and other parasitic creatures. It was a great experience and they were both expressed gratefulness, even though I honestly felt a little under-qualified for the task. We kept in contact after that hunt. Talked about birds often and possible places to hunt. We even got out a few more times and did some actual hunting here and there. This mentorship thing was going great!

My life outside of hunting was going through some rough times, however. My wife and I learned that we were expecting another child and we had planned to let everyone know that Christmas. Life, as it is, does not always go as planned, however, and a couple weeks before Christmas we had a miscarriage. It was a confusing and sad time for us. As a father, I felt blessed that I already had a healthy and beautiful daughter at home. But sitting in that doctor’s office, watching other couples with smiles on their faces, I could not help but think of what could have been, who we lost and all the love we would have given that little person.

Depression is a bitch and can turn into an all-consuming monster if left unchecked. I was lucky enough to have the support of my very strong wife, but I still had bouts of depression for some weeks, hiding it, trying to remain strong for her and my young daughter. Recognizing I needed to talk to someone, I finally started telling some friends about it, and what else could they do but say they were sorry and the conversation would just get awkward from there. I am not really sure what I expected or needed. I discouraged myself from bringing it up, bottled up whatever feelings I had and hid in my own head. And I didn’t leave my house.

One day, out of the blue, Omar messaged me about going out hunting in a spot where he saw some Mountain Quail earlier while deer hunting and he wanted to go check it out, asking if I had wanted to come along. Not feeling up to it and still wallowing in my own grief, I declined, looking to give him an excuse, but couldn’t come up with one. I wanted to be honest and just blurted it out and told him what had happened. Revealing my vulnerability to my mentee, I half expected this would create an awkward situation and I would never hear from this kid again. I had to be breaking some mentoring code here.

No.

Instead, Omar told me he was going to pick me up and we would go hunting that weekend, in search of quail. He gave me the time and the day he would be there. He would even drive. No ifs and buts.

We didn’t see any quail that day. But they were not necessary. That nice hike in the chilly Los Padres National Forest, that winter day, did much for my soul. Amid pines and oaks, life was breathed back into me. The mountain air healed me. The hills reminded me that life is a struggle, well worth the effort once you reach the peak, but like life, there are ups and downs, don’t give up now! How could I ever give back as much as the uplands give me? This is what I needed and Omar was a blessing from God. My mentorship over Omar turned into a friendship. And my dear friend helped me from a downward spiral I was in. I am forever grateful to him.

This mentorship thing was supposed to be about pouring into someone else’s cup. In my pursuit to give back to the upland hunting community and to pass on knowledge to a future generation of hunters, I unexpectedly received much more in return. My cup was filled. I was forced from my comfort zone. I gained wisdom and strength. Patience. Selflessness. I learned to share my passion more openly and with grace. I learned to appreciate people much more. I even gained a valuable friendship. I learned more than I actually taught.

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Hunter participation numbers are at an all-time low these days. When surveyed, most would-be hunters state that the lack of a mentor or having a place to hunt were some of the biggest hurdles with getting their start in hunting. If we all just took one or two people under our wing for a couple of years, we might actually improve these numbers and save our hunting heritage from extinction. Invite someone out. Show them your spots. Teach. Learn. Make memories. Make a friend. The journey might be unexpected, but it just may be what you needed.

 

God Bless & Happy Hunting,

J.R.

 

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