re: Wild Quail

I still make a few hunts here in LA and parts of MS. places with the right land management still have some. But In 5 attempts last year I found found the same number of coveys that I would find in a day 40 years ago(with lesser dogs).

and the last 2 seasons are the most I have found in 20 years.

I saw/heard a Bob White a few days ago in Montgomery County, TX. First one I've seen in a decade. Took a recording of the guy with the Merlin app and it didn't identify it, which I though was weird.

I’ve done telemetry (radio-tracking) on these types of “weird habitat” birds and basically you tend to need a pretty good source population to pump birds into these non-traditional habitat areas. But with enough birds, we would consistently track a number of reasonably large “forest coveys”, several “dry lake bed coveys”, etc.

Once the coveys break up in the spring, however, birds on nests are back to more traditional habitat because that’s where they need to feed the chicks once they hatch. Alternatively, even for nests in weird spots (hardwood forest edges), once the chicks hatch, the parents move them to more traditional habitat areas.

Editing to add that i’m not trying to say any of this is a rule (more a generality) - quail do weird stuff all the time.

Haha, not sure if that was meant for me… but, I speculate all the time! I’ve spent a long time studying bobwhites and they’re amazing birds. In fact, they’re the most studied gamebird, and we still know so little.

If anyone wants a fun read - be sure to check out Stoddard 1931 “The Bobwhite Quail Its Habits Preservation and Increase”. Stoddard really learned an amazing amount using old-school field techniques. I’ll try to find a digital version and post a link. The print version can be hard to find (but may be in your library / I think the LSU library has at least one copy).

We used to have a lot of them on family property in St. Tammany Parish. I couldn't walk the pine savannas without flushing coveys or seen a mom with young 'uns run across our roads. That was a long time ago. Ford's Pasture, now Rouzan, used to hold a lot of birds, too.

LINK

eye worms a big issue in West Texas. They don't necessarily kill the quail but they affect their sight such that they cannot see predators. They now sell feed you can use that is medicated to treat the eye worms.

I find it amazing how they are still around and bounce back fairly quickly. We had a few fires in our lease because of the drought. Those areas had quail by this spring. I bet you couldn't have heard a whistle on the whole place last year. They are around and will come if you manage.

As for turkeys, i don't understand the declines in MS and LA. If you look at Florida, the places that haven't become subdivisions are absolutely loaded, and they are thicker/less burned/wetter/etc.....

We have a couple small coveys on our place in Cenla. I step on em about every other year and they give me a heart attack. Seems on frosty mornings leaving the deer stand they stay tight tight to cover. Literally coming out from under your foot

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As for turkeys, i don't understand the declines in MS and LA

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It’s mostly habitat, just like quail.






















And me. Some of it is because of me.

Is the pasture still predominantly native grasses and forbs? How often is it disturbed with fire or other means?

Scale matters when it comes to quail. Research shows that you need close to 1500 acres of fairly contiguous habitat to maintain a population. And there is a difference in having a sustainable population and having a “huntable” population.

It’s not a magic trick to have quail on a property assuming that there is a large enough footprint of habitat and you have the means/gumption to disturb the land frequently enough to keep it viable for quail. Tall Timbers has the recipe figured out.

Fire ants and predators in general are not the reason for the demise of quail by and large. Can they have negative effects on populations? Sure. But the reason the southeast in general has few quail is because the habitat isn’t there. Introduced grasses, closed canopy forests, lack of disturbance, and intense ag have way more to do with the lack of quail than deer, turkeys, fire ants, coons, etc. You can trap every predator off of land that has no quail and it will make little difference in quail being present.

If you go spend some time in quail country and then go back to the southeast, you will see that the landscape in quail country looks almost nothing like most of the southeast. Here in eastern Oklahoma, we still have quite a few quail present relative to most of the country. I can drive 20 min from my house in a good sized city and hear quail whistle regularly. This area looks nothing like most of the southeast; a much stronger native grass component, some people still burn, drier climate so succession doesn’t occur as quickly, etc. The reasons that they still exist here are evident.

I’ll have to see the research to believe the medicated quail feed/eye worm theory. It’s possible I’ve missed it, but I have not been able to find a single piece of research published by the Rolling Plains Quail Research Ranch or TTU’s toxicology lab that shows data from on the ground use of the medicated feed. Eye worms have been documented in quail for a long time. I would not be surprised if supplemental feeding of traditional grains in the manner that Tall Timbers promotes would be more beneficial than the medicated feed.