Chuck Ring, left, and Joel Topping took these California quail last year on opening day. This year, hunting in the Golden State will be a bit more challenging. Photo by Mike Dickerson.

By now, longtime readers of this magazine are familiar with the formula for producing a good quail season in California:

Healthy habitat + good population carryover + adequate precipitation = good hunting.

This year appears to have come up short in many areas, but especially in one critical component of that formula: Water.

Lack of precipitation is expected to severely impact quail numbers this season in many parts of the state -- including some that saw outstanding wingshooting the past several years for the three species of feathered buzz-bombs calling California home.

This isn't to say that quail hunting will be universally poor this year. But your hunting prospects will likely depend on where you live and how far you're willing to travel to find birds. From the Central Coast to Southern California to the southeastern deserts, many areas saw the lowest total seasonal rainfall amounts on record -- ever. In some spots, there was practically no precipitation at all.

It's a dramatic turnaround. Just three years ago, record-shattering amounts of rainfall made the hills of Death Valley look more like the green hills of Ireland.

Wildflowers blanketed much of the better bird habitat across the southern half of the state -- heralding a banner time for quail.

"Quail are kind of a product of wildflowers," said Sonke Mastrup, deputy director of the California Department of Fish and Game's Wildlife and Inland Fisheries Division.

"That's the simplest way to look at it. That growth produces the protein for egg production, and the insects and seeds that come off of it feed the young. It's that simple."

In other words, precipitation impacts both reproduction and recruitment of young birds into the population in a manner that's essentially self-regulating.

Mastrup should know. In addition to being a quail-hunting aficionado, he is the author of the DFG's Guide to Hunting Quail in California.

Updated every couple of years, it serves as an excellent reference for locating public-land quail-hunting opportunities in California.

"The seasons are typically set by the January, February and March rainfall," said Mastrup.

"Those months are key indicators of how good the season is going to be. The body condition of the hens is really set by then, and it's hard to recover from poor body condition."

Egg production is physiologically taxing for the hens. They need a huge amount of nutritional resources to lay all those eggs.

There might be a few places in Southern California where you get a late hatch, but the females literally turn off if they are in poor condition at the start of the reproductive cycle, Mastrup said.

Some late-April rains gave rise to hopes for a last-minute jumpstart to the reproductive cycle. It varies from area to area, but late rains generally don't help a whole lot. It was mostly a case of too little, too late.

The picture isn't entirely bleak, however. While the southern half of the state generally suffers during dry winters, other parts of the state will fare better. Here's a region-by-region breakdown of what you can expect this season.

NORTH COAST REGION
The entire North Coast, pretty much west of Highway 5, is expected be good this year.

"The birds often suffer from too much rain in this area, and all around, dry years tend to be better than wet years in this area," Mastrup said. "It's good for ground-nesting birds because they experience less chick mortality. From Mendocino County on up, it's looking pretty good."

This vast region includes a lot of different habitat types where you can find California quail, as well as mountain quail in higher elevations.

Some areas are always better for one species or the other, so it pays to get out and scout before the season. Areas worth exploring include the Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel Wilderness Area and the Modoc National Forest, particularly in the lower elevations.