So what can you do

[Howboutthemdawgs]

For the average landowner who is mainly fixated on deer? We may never return quail to anywhere close to historic levels but a couple coveys per property could be a major boom for the population.

Personally I have about 3 acres around the house and pond that holds birds. I’m putting it in a rotation to burn every 2 years or so and spraying out any nasty stuff like sycamore. Left a couple sumac trees for shade and roosting. Also a fence row with cedars and other trees they can use. Removing feral cats I’ve acquired.

Leaving ditches in my crop fields fallow. Not letting the farmer encroach or spray them. I sprayed some of the bad stuff out last year and burned one. Will try to burn the others this spring.

Spraying out sericea lespedeza around my fields and letting better forbs come up.

In all reality that’s about the extent of what I am or honestly can do. I’d love to pretend I can manage like a south ga plantation but I don’t have to means or time to do that.

 

[jsasker007]

Keeping the predators to a minimum and creating good habitat to give them a reason to be there and stay there.

 

[SwampCat]

I dont know what else I can do short of something major like turn woods into fields. I have nwsg on all my open unused ground - maybe 15 acres. Ten acres of food - wheat, millet, and sunflower food plots interspersed through that. I trap quite a bit in the spring. A lot of cedars along the edge. I have not seen a wild quail within 70 miles of my place in the last 20 years.

Thirty years ago, I used to bird hunt this very ground - before I owned it. It was compacted cattle pasture back then with a few wooded draws. There is another 48 acres of pasture adjacent to mine that is still used for cattle. There were three covies using that ground back then. My ground is so far better habitat now than back then you cant even compare. But one huge difference - $25 coon hides instead of coons nobody will now buy.

Back then, quail could nest in mediocre habitat and raise a nest. Back then, all rural folks were either trappers or coon hunters. Almost all of them were hawk killers. My big landowner neighbors arent going to trade their cattle for quail.

 

[Triple C]

In all reality that’s about the extent of what I am or honestly can do. I’d love to pretend I can manage like a south ga plantation but I don’t have to means or time to do that.

@Howboutthemdawgs …I’ve hunted multiple times on one of those south GA quail plantations. Even there, 90+% of the birds we shot were pen raised, but then again, they have a different group of hunters in each week that requires many, many more birds than that constant hunting can support.

With that said, their long-leaf savannah pine habitat is something to behold. Generally thinned to a basal area of 30ish. I’m somewhat copying that on my place with loblolly. Recent thinning brought it down to a basal area closer to 50. Burned this past spring and more recently, aerial sprayed to kill competing hardwood stems, privet and other stuff. I continue to see an increase in quail populations to the point that I’m considering another bird dog whcih I haven’t owned since the late ‘70’s.

 

[Turkish]

I dont know what else I can do short of something major like turn woods into fields. I have nwsg on all my open unused ground - maybe 15 acres. Ten acres of food - wheat, millet, and sunflower food plots interspersed through that. I trap quite a bit in the spring. A lot of cedars along the edge. I have not seen a wild quail within 70 miles of my place in the last 20 years.

Thirty years ago, I used to bird hunt this very ground - before I owned it. It was compacted cattle pasture back then with a few wooded draws. There is another 48 acres of pasture adjacent to mine that is still used for cattle. There were three covies using that ground back then. My ground is so far better habitat now than back then you cant even compare.

You don’t mention what that cattle pasture has in it. If it’s like literally every pasture I know of (yes, literally) its composition has changed to exotics over the last 30 years that quail simply cannot traverse.

I’ve read enough to know your thoughts on this, but the research seems pretty clear that acceptable habitat is limiting, not predation.

 

[Turkey Creek]

Grazing can go hand in hand with quail. You just have to be able or willing to rotate stock when needed. I come from a farm family and I understand that costs of farming have never gotten cheaper. There has to be a heartfelt desire to be a farmer/rancher/wildlife manager and know that you are foregoing some profit to keep wildlife on your land. Poorly managed cool season grass pasture is high on the list of negatives for quail in my area, including the farm that we purchased last in 2022. It will probably be another 2 years before I can complete the renovation on our pasture acres. It is a work in progress.

 

[SwampCat]

You don’t mention what that cattle pasture has in it. If it’s like literally every pasture I know of (yes, literally) its composition has changed to exotics over the last 30 years that quail simply cannot traverse.

I’ve read enough to know your thoughts on this, but the research seems pretty clear that acceptable habitat is limiting, not predation.

My pasture/field area is primarily little bluestem with some scattered indian grass and gamma grass - with four acres of johnson grass/pollinator mix. The problem isnt so much the composition of my field as it is the scale of my quail habitat. I dont really know what all was in the pasture 20 years ago - I know some fescue - I have sprayed that a number of times to get rid of it. The forb component was much more diverse 20 years ago. Since establishment of the nwsg, the forb diversity has been reduced - probably because they couldnt out compete the nwsg.

My large neighboring landowners are cattle ranchers - 60/40 woods to pasture. Their pastures are primarily fescue. 20 acres of decent cover does not makeup for the 1000’s of acres of poor cover around me. Point being - all this land had some quail 30 years ago and it was heavily grazed in the open areas - including mine. I dont know what the main pasture plant type was 30 years ago - but the pastures were never over five inches tall. Those birds back then were always found in close association with the edge because there was no cover in the fields at any time of the year.

It wasnt like where we hunted clearcuts and found birds a quarter mile from the woods and got to hunt singles in broom sedge. The birds around the pasture were what we called woods birds - always on the edge of the woods or deeper back in the woods.

My 20 acres of decent cover is not going to support a covey or two. My point is, quail survived 20/30/40 years ago - in what appeared to be horrible quail habitat - overgrazed pasture and woods. That is what they have now - but definitely cant confirm the pasture component back 30 years ago.