Arizona

Arizona's upland hunting is built primarily around quail. Gambel's quail is the state's most widespread desert species, holding the low desert basins and grasslands below roughly 5,500 feet across the southern two-thirds of the state; scaled quail occupies the drier Chihuahuan Desert grasslands of the southeast, concentrated in the Sulphur Springs, San Simon, and San Bernardino valleys running west to the Baboquivari foothills; and Montezuma (Mearns') quail holds a narrower band still, the oak-and-mesquite grassland woodlands of the Sky Island mountain ranges south of Tucson, the Santa Rita, Huachuca, Patagonia, and Chiricahua Mountains. California quail is the most range-restricted of the four, an introduced population confined to the Little Colorado River corridor near St. Johns in Apache and Navajo counties. All four are hunted under one general season, running from mid-October through early February, with Montezuma quail opening later, in early December. Northern bobwhite quail technically carries a year-round open season statewide, but Arizona does not manage it as a true game bird; the birds present are scattered, unmapped introductions rather than an established huntable population, distinct from the state's protected masked bobwhite subspecies near the Mexican border.

Arizona's one native mountain grouse, dusky grouse, is confined to high-elevation spruce-fir and mixed conifer forest above 8,500 feet: the White and Escudilla Mountains, the Kaibab Plateau, and the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff (an established introduction), plus an active, still-closed reintroduction area on the Mogollon Rim. Its season runs from September through early November. Ring-necked pheasant hunting is essentially limited to one place, the agricultural fields south of Yuma, the state's only wild population open to firearms hunting; archery and falconry seasons reach the same birds over a longer stretch from fall through early February, but access requires landowner permission on what is private farmland. Band-tailed pigeon rounds out the state's upland lineup with a short two-week season in late September into early October, hunted statewide rather than concentrated in any single named region.