re: Wild Quail

quote:

---

but even in perfectly good habitat where there used to be quail, there are none. But there's hawks.

---

Eh.

But how do you know that? Are you going by how many quail you hear? How often are you going out and locating a covey with a quail call, or listening period - just for quail? Surely you're not going by how many you see? (And I'm talking for what you said, i.e., "in perfectly good habitat where you used to see quail.")

From what I've read, the research is showing that the quail population in the SE back in the day was artificially high due to the prominence of fields (especially fallow ones giving habitat diversity), field edges, and agricultural practices back then. What they're saying now is that wasn't necessarily the way their population traditionally was before Europeans arrived. In short, it was overinflated. That doesn't mean numbers now are good, but that we can't compare the heyday of quail hunting to today, or the days before it.

The answer for ALL wildlife, regarding their population numbers, ALWAYS comes down to one single culprit: habitat. Everyone is worried about climate change, but what we should be discussing is the disgusting prevalence of invasives and what it does to biodiversity. Where I live (and likely you too), in open areas and the understory alike, there are as many or more invasives than native plants: If it's not cogongrass in the sun, it's Chinese privet in the shade. If it's not Japanese stiltweed in the shade, it's Chinese bushclover in the sun. They're decimating our ecosystems, and you can buy a lot of the damn things at the freaking garden center. Why is that? That's a simple, easy fix, but that's too much for a politician or bureaucrat to understand: Ban invasives from being bought at garden centers -and that comes from a staunch anti-statist because they're so ineffective when it matters. I've made hundreds of thousands of dollars just off chewing up, knocking over, piling up, or burning Bradford pears: you can still buy them today in many states. WHY?

I spoke with a silviculturist with the USFS last week for an hour discussing a cogongrass infestation that has spread to my land from the national forest. All he does is treat invasives on national forest land in Mississippi. For his master's degree he studied the spread of cogongrass via DOT mowing, and they were seeing it move THIRTY TO FIFTY MILES PER DAY due to DOT mowers spreading it. Why is that not a priority? It destroys habitat for everything it touches except for itself. Why is the government knowingly spreading invasives? Why are DOT mowers not taking a 1 day class before the mowing season in order to properly identify the major invasives, drop a GPS pin for treatment, and go around it? Guess who suffers when that state agent spreads the invasives down the right-of-way, and it inevitably spreads onto adjacent land destroying its habitat and land value? The landowner, i.e., the TAXPAYER.. Our highways aren't just a way for us to travel across the country.


Habitat destruction is the problem with quail. The worst thing a conservationist can do is fire up his bushhog in May and mow all of his property down to where it looks like his front yard.

Habitat reigns supreme regarding conservation, and if the lunatics actually cared about nature, they'd stop spray painting the Mona Lisa, and start demanding municipalities repurpose and reuse developed properties instead of our incessant, never ending urban sprawl. If it's actual, good, contiguous upland habitat, I'll bet there's quail there, and if there's quail, there's everything else. Build it and the wildlife will come, but it's not going to look like our front lawn - we need open areas of native plants to build up populations for ALL wildlife.

If you have at least a couple thousand acres of contiguous, upland savanna forests, you're going to have quail. A good dog will prove it. We are taking more and more every year in that exact type habitat, but again, we have good dogs. When they stop pointing coveys I'll know for sure they're falling off in good habitat.

If ya'll want to see just how prevalent fields and savanna type habitat was back in the glory days, go to the historic aerials website in the link below. Some areas go back further than others, but some of my stomping grounds have images going all the way back to the 1960s. Freaking fields dotted across the landscape in nearly unimaginable numbers. Habitat. Habitat. Habitat. What's, "pretty" to us is a wasteland to nature. historic aerials

Slow clap.

Invasives have gotten bad in the Deep South but it could be much worse. I worry about what it will be like in 30 years.

Wild Turkey Science podcast talks about this a ton, in the context of turkeys. Their comments: We’re also subsidizing coons with corn piles… bigly!

quote:

---

Not to turn this religious but how was there perfectly harmonious flora/fauna for eons until humans learned how to ship things across oceans? In a bazillion years, kudzu (or its equivalent) couldn’t figure out how to take over the Southeast? Seeing the aggression of exotic species has done more to convince me of a Creator than any person has. But I digress…

---

I won't comment too much, I don't want to go onto anymore lists. That's extremist talk - a Creator, His creation, its perfect nature, and all that, "nonsense."

Just read your Facebook feed, pleb, and pipe down.

quote:

---

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).

---

Man if they have a copy they better keep it locked up....hard to find and expensive when you do. I would LOVE to read Stoddard but I have never found any e-books and I would prefer reading on kindle....eye sight is too far gone to read print LOL.

I am pretty certain that Rosalie Mason, mother of Bailey and Robb White Jr. (Robb White Sr. was their father and also a pretty good writer) co-authored a study of birds killed at a TV tower in the panhandle of Florida over a 10 or so year period. Bailey and White Jr. are fantastic reads...I would LOVE to read that study if I am correct....I have read Sr. and Jr. and Bailey White is one of my all time favorites....would love to read something the matriarch had a hand in creating.

quote:

---

Reading the responses it looks like outside of some high level managed areas there is almost no wild quail hunting in the SE anymore. Thats a shame

---

We use to have them rampant in Lamar county when I was a kid. Late 80s early 90s… recently we have had them show back up. Not many but we do hear them.
I have one friend who manages a plantation in Albany and another whose family owned one in Leesburg. The amount of money that goes into maintaining world class quail habitat is unreal.