Matt Gehrmann
Writer · California Upland · Based in the Bay Area
I grew up in Northern California, hunting the Central Valley with friends for pheasant, valley quail, and dove, with some waterfowl mixed in. The first birds I ever shot were ringnecks out of irrigated grain stubble somewhere east of Sacramento, and the country hooked me — the flatness, the noise of the canal water, the kind of October light you only get on the valley floor. Upland was the most accessible game in the region, and walking those fields with friends is what turned hunting into a habit instead of a hobby.
These days I'm still based in the Bay Area, and most of my hunting is within a half-day drive: the Sacramento Valley (rice levees and CDFW Type-C fields for dove and pheasant), the Inner Coast Range and the Mendocino National Forest (valley quail, with the occasional chukar push), and the eastern Sierra and Owens Valley when the schedule permits a long drive. I've spent enough time in the Modoc Plateau to know the country and not enough to claim it as a primary range. Mountain quail are the lifetime project — every season I try to get more deliberate about finding them in the Trinity Alps and the northern Sierra.
I don't have a dog yet. I hunt on foot, work close to the brush, and lean on calling, listening, and reading the cover. The next chapter is the right pup, and a fair amount of what I'll write under "Dog Stories" over the next year will be exactly that — choosing a breed for California terrain, the puppy decisions, the first year of training, the first wild bird. If you've raised a dog on California upland country, I'm interested in your story.
I shoot a Browning Citori 12-gauge. My gear philosophy is two-part: spend on what touches the ground (boots, brush pants) and the bird (shells), don't spend on what other people are looking at. I've written more about gear under our Gear section than I expected to, because every piece of California upland kit gets a real stress test — chamise, manzanita, granite dust, foxtails, heat, every kind of moisture.
Reach out
Email me at matt@californiaupland.com. I'll write back. If you want to send me a photo of a covey I should be paying attention to, you can — I won't put it on Instagram without your sign-off.