Upland Game Bird Management Account Projects

California Waterfowl will hire a coordinator to oversee the novice spring turkey hunt program. The coordinator will work closely CWA staff and Sacramento NWR Complex staff to perform various tasks, including conducting draws, website design, scouting hunting areas, setting up blinds, contacting and screening drawn hunters, communicating with volunteers, installing signage, checking in hunters and volunteers on the day of the hunt, conducting hunter safety meetings and assisting refuge staff with miscellaneous tasks and projects around the complex.

Through CWA’s relationship with private landowners, the program has created access to private and public lands and is identified as the California Waterfowl Hunt Program. The program has grown steadily over the past 15 years and now includes almost 40 individual properties encompassing over 60,000 acres.

This project will develop a workflow for processing existing audio data to develop mountain quail occupancy and abundance estimates and trends from 2010- 2021. This information is important to inform data driven Mountain Quail management approaches, including setting harvest quotas and guiding habitat management and restoration.

The California Conservation Genomics Project has whole genome sequences from 29 California samples of Mountain Quail. This project will generate additional quail whole genome sequences in priority areas to guide management in California.

This project will facilitate a spring turkey hunt program at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Complex in partnership with the National Wild Turkey Federation, providing volunteer guides as mentors for each successful applicant and funding to hire a Spring Turkey Hunt Program Coordinator.

Through CWA’s relationships with private landowners, the California Waterfowl Hunt Program has created access to private and public lands over the past 13 years and now includes almost 40 properties and 60,000 acres. The program hosts waterfowl, pheasant, quail, dove, deer, turkey and pig hunts.

This project will develop upland gamebird food crops on 262 acres that will be planted and available for hunting. Through the CDFW and the Imperial County Fish and Game Commission , an additional approximately 1,600 acres will also be made available, for access to hunting.

The goal of this project is to provide a quantitative basis for prioritizing areas for quail population and habitat conservation on a state-wide basis for California. To achieve this, we will use a hierarchical approach with three spatial scales: state, county, and home range to link the broad-scale population dynamics of three species of wild quail in California to statewide landscape and monitoring metrics.

The California Waterfowl Association developed a program based upon CDFW's lottery system for hunting on public lands. Through CWA’s relationship with private landowners, the program has created access to private lands and has been identified as the California Waterfowl Hunt Program.

California Waterfowl Association's Hunting Heritage programs hosts beginning hunter skills camps and high quality hunting opportunities including waterfowl, pheasant, dove, turkey, some of which include hunting mentors / guides and FREE upland hunts for new hunters at private, licensed upland game bird clubs.