Opener Eve, 2026
Opening day Alan - photo by Peter Burnham
It's the last night of August, and if you're anything like us, there's a vest by the door with the shell loops already loaded and an alarm set for a time that will feel like a mistake when it goes off.
We've spent eight weeks getting ready in public. Since the pheasant cornerstone kicked off the sprint on August 1, we've written about reading a cut safflower field, nonlead shot at 25 yards, the Imperial Valley's claim to the best opener in the state, wing-shooting drills, vests, regulations, where to camp in the Sacramento Valley's wildlife areas, dove tacos, and what goes in the truck at 4:30 a.m. All of it was really about one morning. Tomorrow, somewhere between the safflower stubble of the Sacramento Valley floor and the hot milo fields down in the Imperial Valley, the 2026 season starts — and every plan we've published becomes somebody's actual day.
One honest thing before we all go. It is going to be hot, and the doves will still be flying when your dog shouldn't be. Peter's whole plan is built around that: Alan works the first cool hours and not a minute past them, because a three-year-old cocker's enthusiasm doesn't read a thermometer. (Matt's dog problem is simpler — the Brittany pup doesn't arrive until spring, so this is his last dogless opener.) The best hunters we know are the ones who quit early — birds cleaned and iced by ten, dog in the shade with a full water pan, nothing to prove. If you take one sentence from this whole summer of prep, take that one; the longer version lives in our heat-safety piece. And if tonight you get the nagging feeling you've forgotten something, that's what the checklist is for — we won't repeat it here.
Here's the line we'd say to you across a truck bed: nothing else in the season feels like the first hour of September 1, when the light comes up over a field you chose on faith and the first dove crosses too fast and too high and you swing anyway. That hour is why we did all this.
We'll see you out there — Matt in the Sacramento Valley, Peter still weighing two plans, which is the most honest sentence in this note. Tomorrow night, when the birds are cleaned and the tailgate's down, hit reply or leave a comment and tell us how it went. The field reports start Tuesday, and the best ones won't be ours.
Good luck. Shoot straight. Water the dog.
— Matt & Peter California Upland
Matt Gehrmann grew up hunting the Central Valley for pheasant, quail, and dove, and is based in the Bay Area. Read more → · Subscribe to the weekly digest →
Peter Burnham grew up in Nevada hunting chukar in the Sierras and dove in the valleys and hunts behind Alan (a three-year-old English cocker). Read more → · Subscribe to the weekly digest →