Bob White Quail

[Neil Mace]

After a recent dust-up on where quail are most likely to be found ended, I decided to do a little research, and not just argue opinion.

I did a Google search for "Bob White Quail Edge", 84,000 articles came up. Near all that were written by biologists spoke to needing more edge to have more quail, and how important early successional cover is to their propogation. Please do your own search to verify.

Now Wagonmaster and TrueBlue made some very good points, I am just not sure the so called experts agree.

I noted before edges are more pronounced where quail are in more serious decline.

There maybe more to this than our usual arguments.

Perhaps we need to consider doing away with the edges in BW country and planting motts, we need to find something that will work.

Neil

[BigShooter]

Neil,

If I read this correctly, apparently our biologists are trained to concentrate on working the edges for quail.

Here's an example of one of the googled articles:

"Quail are fond of early successional habitats (recently disturbed habitats) especially where several of these habitats come together and create a diversity of edges. An ideal land-use pattern for bobwhite might be an area with 30 percent brushy/weedy habitat and 10 percent woodland interspersed with odd shaped row crop fields."

http://www.iowadnr.com/wildlife/files/b ... quail.html

Mark

[Neil Mace]

True, Mark, it was what I was taught and still believe; however, we had some folks from TX/OK (where quail are not in as serious decline) comment that it is not as true there.

Neil

[EWSIV]

Do you have a link to the previous discusion?

[BigShooter]

Here's the link to the previous discussion:

http://www.gundogforum.com/forum/viewto ... ht=#106556

Mark

[EWSIV]

I think the definition of edge is the problem. Here is a picture I took hunting this year in South Texas of some pretty typical bobwhite cover. How many edges do you see?

[WildRose]

EW that look spretty typical of sout Texas. Our part of the state typically has a lot more prickly pear, lote bush, and wild plums as well as quite a bit heavier mesquite cover unless you spend a lot of time and money pushing mesquite.

Mr. Mace is typical of the southern quail hunters that come out here for the first time.

You turn them loose in a 2000 acre pasture, they run around hunting the fencelines and roads and four hours later they come back wanting to see the next piece of property and boy they sure hope there's more birds than they found on the first place.

I take a couple of dogs out, show them how to hunt it and they see more wild birds in three days than most have seen in the last twenty years. Unlike our starting author here though most of them actually learn that first time out and will therefore be much more successful on successive trips.

No we out here don't simply hunt edges, we hunt where the bird densities are highest and where our time and efforts will be most rewarded. We hunt where the best low brushy cover is mixed with natural food sources like rag weed, wild sunflowers, and near water sources during prolonged dry spells, as well as during the late morning and early evening since more often than not out here quail water twice a day.

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons that we still have the highest wild BW populations in the country here in TX, and OK is BECAUSE our birds are not limited to habitat being created by man, are not limited to small narrow long edges (also known as killing zones) and rather than being dependant upon agriculture or food plots have on a typical year more food than they can eat naturally which is interspersed amongst the protective brushy cover.

The above paragraph would paraphrase many speeches pretty closely given by both Fred Guthrie and Dale Rollins, the two most recognized and respected Quail Biologists in Texas and OK.

But by all means don't let experience, education, or fact interfere with Mr. Mace's attempt to draw me into another online debate.

Dr. Rollins heads up an organization here in TX kown as "The Bob White Brigade". While he's not busy monitoring quail here in the state, giving seminars and lectures he works with this organization primarily trying to keep young people interested in wildlife and particularly in the sport of hunting upland birds here in the state.

The BW Brigade is a non profit educational organization that I'd encourage anyone serious about the BW quail to join.

CR

[EWSIV]

My point is that there are some obvious edges to hunt (tree lines, fence rows, etc) and there are less obvious but no less viable edges. I see dozens in that photograph where some people may see only a few.

[WildRose]

EW since every two dimensional object has at least six edges, (four sides plus top and bottom) I can see thousands of edges in that picture.

Certainly each of those groups of trees or blue bushes are objectives, and each of them would have a down wind "edge". Bare ground holds no birds so there'd be no point in a dog running in the middle of the bare dirt, so you could say where the bare dirt transitions back to cover is an "edge" for a dog to hunt. We could go on and on.

I would walk the pasture and let the dogs hunt the objectives. If I saw a likely objective the dogs where likely to miss i'd direct them to it.

When I'm evaluating a property I awlays start with a cursory look around the perimiter and "edges" along the roads, but if I want to see what's really there we get out, unload the dogs and start walking.

Of course there's the more traditional way of approaching a pasture like that and simply pay some local to come throw grain out on the "edges" of the road a couple of times a week before you go hunting and then by all means hunting just the edge will produce phenomenal bird numbers for you for a short time. The problem is that also creates a killing zone for the hawks and other predators and you end up marinalizing your population dramatically in short order.

I'd suggest you go read through that previous thread and you'll get an idea of what the context of that discussion was and why Mr. Mace feels the need to drag up a two week old dead mule to create yet another stink. CR

[BigShooter]

I think previous discussions have edged up against this subject from a number of angles.

Wild birds take advantage of available cover, food and water sources which vary by region.

Like pheasants, BW prefer to walk, however their legs are a lot shorter and they have to walk where they can get around. Obviously BW will have difficulty trying to walk through really thick cover close to the ground like thick grasses or thick CRP. So they prefer to walk where they can or if it's really thick they have to fly in.

In parts of the country where the main option is thinner, edge areas adjacent to thicker, close-to-the-ground cover, seems like the edge would be easier for the BW to walk into or out of.

CR,

Where you find lots of quail is there thick cover close to the ground like fescue?

Mark

[WildRose]

No where you find the most dense populations of BW's is going to be places like shown in the picture above or with even thicker and denser brush and mesquite cover.

Tall bunch grasses even when thick don't create a problem for them walking because the stools are centralized and the grass shoots upward.

Where we've had the most dramatic losses in quail out here are where native ground has been ripped up and put into monocultures of various types of bermuda, or where pastures have been cleared of all brush and sprayed for weeds.

Grasses like bermuda are too thick for them to walk through and where those types of grasses are hayed, between the frequent cuttings and high usage of pesticides it creates a virtual biological desert devoid of weeds and bugs (food source) as well as creating cover they can't maneuver through. CR

[Neil Mace]

I first hunted South Texas in 1963.

It is not my intention to get into another insult exchange; Rollins, Gutherie, and other TX/OK biologists wrote some of those 84,000 articles, and they seem to think there are edges. But my purpose of posting, was perhaps they and others are wrong. We need to find an answer to BW decline somewhere.

Back to South Texas, I have found S/E edge running dogs adapt quicker to So. Tex. than the reverse, but it could be a factor of there often being so many birds a cocker could find them.

Neil

[WildRose]

Neil there are edges everywhere. Out here though you hunt smarter and more effectively by hunting specific types of cover and specific types of objectives.

Considering how much I've talked with Dr. Rollins, no I don't think he's wrong very often. Whe he and I disagree we talk about our observations and try to learn something.

Unlike most biologist PhD's he's also an avid hunter and spends more time in the field than sitting around the office reading someone else's data.

I never stated there aren't edges out here, or that you can't find birds along them. What I did say is that if you simply hunt edges such as fields, roads and fence lines you are missing the majority of the birds and ignoring the majority of the habitat which holds them.

BTW, alot of Texas including south Texas has undergone significant change since 63. Since I've spent the majority of my life here since 62 I've seen a lot of it. CR

[WildRose]

Neil if you wanted the ideal quail habitat in your area all you'd need to do is change the "plan" to one with about 10% at most in cultivation and put it in food plots with mixed quail freindly seasonals which could reseed themselves and be self sustating for several years at a time.

Then put about 90% of it into mixed tall prairie type grasses, low brush, and whatever weeds crop up naturally there when you quit farming.

One of the biggest problems I see with how people attempt to manage for quail out there is by leaving the existing forest and fields as the predominant feature the birds are forced into narrow strips of cover creating killing zones for the natural predators, particularly raptors.

You also need to eliminate cotton and soybean production as well which would sure screw up a lot of farm plans.

That however isn't very conducive to how the average farmer wants his place to look and it sure wouldn't look much like the sterotypical Mansion/farm everyone expects to see in the south. CR

[EWSIV]

I think you gentleman just have different ideas of what edge habitat is.

BTW, alot of Texas including south Texas has undergone significant change since 63. Since I've spent the majority of my life here since 62 I've seen a lot of it. CR

That is certainly true. Interestingly enough, that picture is of a piece property that was burned when an old tractor caught on fire in August of 2005 (or maybe 2004). That is why those mesquites are so dark looking. Though they are alive, many of the mesquites and oak trees still look charred from that fire. The following year was the best year that they had had down there ever, but there was also optimum rainfall that year. They then had a poor rainfall year with outstanding populations of birds the year after the year of the fire.

Of course, 06-07 was awful. There were no quail at all. But, this year, with ample rain from January-September it bounced back to rival the year of the fire.

[BigShooter]

I just don't want to get hung up on the word "edge". To me "edge" represents less of an intersection of surfaces than it does a type of cover that meets a BW's needs.

If we delve deeper, what kind of vegetation holds high numbers of BW? How does that cover in an edge or other BW holding vegetation compare to the surrounding habitat and what BW need does that fulfill? How does that differ from one region to another?

Can what works in TX or other States with high BW numbers be replicated elsewhere? Does each region require a slightly different solution because of local farming practices, food & water sources, types of vegetation that will grow in the region, predator mix, weather, etc.?

And .... how quickly will a good gun dog figure out what objectives on that particular piece of ground produce numbers of upland birds?

P.S. I see CR typed faster than me and already answered most of the above.

[Neil Mace]

The Ames Plantation has 20,000 acres extensively managed for quail, with some of the greatest minds in quail propogation consulting and involved, spending thousands of dollars and man hours, yet the quail continue to decline.

They have tried nearly everything else, perhaps they should try to make the place look like South Texas.

My first trip to South Texas was in 1963, my last in 2007.

Here is what I think is going on in TX/OK; the quail are often so plentiful that some are almost always in transition, thus found in places other than edges.

I would like to see one quote from the 84,000 Google hits that says quail are not an edge bird, just one. Odds say it has got to be there, but I can't find it.

Neil

[BigShooter]

We don't have BW in Minnesota so I have appreciated this thread as a learning opportunity. I have sincerely appreciated the fact that participants have been civil to one another.

Neil,
I hear what you're saying and I will read some of those articles. It appears that even if quail prefer an edge that the experts can't make that work at Ames. So I agree with you, clearly there are still more questions than answers.

CR,
If I were going to So. Tx to hunt quail I'd absolutely listen to the advice of a local quail hunting expert who's spent days/years on the ground.

Mark

[WildRose]

Here is what I think is going on in TX/OK; the quail are often so plentiful that some are almost always in transition, thus found in places other than edges.

That sounds logical. However even on the worst years, like each of the last two I find quail frequenting the exact same spots year after year at the appropriate times of day. The difference is, instead of finding ten coveys, on a good year, on a bad year we find one. Instead of finding a covey of 40 birds we find a covey of eight.

The rule out here is that there are certain food sources and specific cover objectives which will always hold whatever quail are in the area.

In truth except during their night time and midday roosting periods quail are always in transition. If they don't keep on the move constantly throughout the day they quit being wild birds and just turn into bait for the predators.

CR

[Neil Mace]

In truth except during their night time and midday roosting periods quail are always in transition. If they don't keep on the move constantly throughout the day they quit being wild birds and just turn into bait for the predators.

CR

There is some real truth in the above. One of the more obvious aspect of the land where quail are not in as steep of a decline, is there is more over-head cover, thus less avian predation, in fact, fewer avian predators.

What few wild quail we have remaining outside TX/OK tend to spend most of their time in plum thickets, Bi-color, and other mid-height cover.

[Casper]

The Ames Plantation has 20,000 acres extensively managed for quail, with some of the greatest minds in quail propogation consulting and involved, spending thousands of dollars and man hours, yet the quail continue to decline.

They have tried nearly everything else, perhaps they should try to make the place look like South Texas.

In my personal opinion I would be willing to bet that if places such as Ames Plantation wanted to really develop there places for quail and other wildlife that if they just left it alone Nature would rebuild itself back to normal. Problem is we are too impatient to wait nearly a decade or more for this to happen.

When the topics of dog breeding (or any breeding) come up they (researchers) say that if we just left those animals to breed for them self they would eventually breed back to they way they once were. How true this is I have know idea but you can look at places from a hundred years ago that were abandoned (mining towns, farms, etc.) and see that nature has already rebuild herself or is still in the process.

We keep trying to control the way life works. We are able to make things work for us but we are not making everything better. Sometimes its best to just let nature take its course.

FWIW

[luke0927]

I have basically given up on GA for wild quail...you hardely ever see hederows and people usually have just hay feilds, also people do not hunt and trap predators like they should.

Im only 22 and have never got to true wild birds in GA....the only wild coveys i have seen were in the thickest clear cuts while tracking deer....I guess i need to come to South Texas and hunt!!!

[TrueBlu Shorthairs]

Neil, since I was mentioned thought I'd give a short thought. Charlie covered it well imho. Cut hay fields do constitute edges, however, when I speak, of edges for wild quail and where birds are found, I am never speaking of small draws with thickets and hay fields, as seen at Lake Murray in Ardmore, OK. Where I love those grounds, that place will never and can never support quail reproduction or propogation. There's little food, cover is too thick, too many hay fields, too small of draws, little natural grasses, little prairie, etc. etc.

Where we hunt wild birds is often like your pics, large, over 5000 acre mesquite fields with scrub brush. Fencerows next to these fields with tilled crop fields. Never large areas of hardwoods. Diversity of cover.

Edges alone mean nothing.

[ezzy333]

Here in the mid-west you always found quail under the scubby growth and where the ground cover was thin.

Ezzy

[WildRose]

In my personal opinion I would be willing to bet that if places such as Ames Plantation wanted to really develop there places for quail and other wildlife that if they just left it alone Nature would rebuild itself back to normal. Problem is we are too impatient to wait nearly a decade or more for this to happen.

The problem is, here even in Texas where inarguably we have better wild BW habitat by nature than just about anywhere else, just letting nature take it's course doesn't work out too well, but neither does too much interference from man.

Ideally you'd have mixed grasses, forbs, weeds, with about thirty percent or more in low brush such as plums and lote bush. In this type terrain all the natural factors are in the BW's favor.

The problem is land won't stay like that for long. You clear mesquite and within 30 years the mesquite is back two or three times thicker than it was naturally.

Fire which is a great management tool in places like KS does not work well here unless it's pretty frequent because mesquite is very resistant to fire once it gets over about a 3" diameter. Therefore if you burn frequently enough to control mesquite you are also burning frequently enough to keep the quail from naturally repopulating in large numbers.

To maintain the "ideal balance" between low brush cover, open mixed grass, forbs, weeds, and minimal tall tree cover is a fairly expensive proposition.

No grazing is almost as bad as too much because the rapid successionals take over very quickly and will get so thick as to choke out other beneficial plants and to make it difficult for quail to maneuver.

One of the bigger problems people don't pay much attention to is hatching season weather conditions. You get east and north of I-20 and it's going to be a very rare thing to see even two successful hatches in a year due to weather, whereas in S. Texas, it's not at all unheard of when conditions are ideal to see newly hatched birds nine or ten months per year.

Not even a drought wipes out a quail hatch as fast as cold rain, wind, hail and rapidly dropping temps which often occur in conjunction with thunderstorms. That's what wiped out a large percentage of our birds here in north and NW Texas last summer.

When all the conditions are right, the reproductivity and survival rate of the BW is utterly amazing, but anything less than the ideals can result in dramatic losses in a hurry. CR

[EWSIV]

The Ames Plantation has 20,000 acres extensively managed for quail, with some of the greatest minds in quail propogation consulting and involved, spending thousands of dollars and man hours, yet the quail continue to decline.

They have tried nearly everything else, perhaps they should try to make the place look like South Texas.

My first trip to South Texas was in 1963, my last in 2007.

Here is what I think is going on in TX/OK; the quail are often so plentiful that some are almost always in transition, thus found in places other than edges.

I would like to see one quote from the 84,000 Google hits that says quail are not an edge bird, just one. Odds say it has got to be there, but I can't find it.

Neil

Do you have pictures of the grounds at Ames?

[Neil Mace]

Ames has a nice web site.

http://www.amesplantation.org/field-tri ... nopsis.asp

After you open the above, click on the "Action Photos" for each brace, and you will see the dogs and the terrain. There are also tabs for "additional photos" if you want to see more.

I know the crew at Ames fairly well, they seem to know what they are doing. It is possible that it is not as easy as some think.

[zzweims]

"Quail are fond of early successional habitats (recently disturbed habitats) especially where several of these habitats come together and create a diversity of edges. An ideal land-use pattern for bobwhite might be an area with 30 percent brushy/weedy habitat and 10 percent woodland interspersed with odd shaped row crop fields."

I agree with this quote as these are the areas on our farm where we are most likely to find quail. BUT, our 'edges' can be anywhere from 40-400 yards wide--and that is tiny compared to the larger plantations, let alone the western plains and deserts. In the photo below, the 'edge' is everything between the unplanted crop field (bottom) and the trees (top). If a dog only hunted the edge of the field or the edge of the treeline and missed the TRUE edge--everything in between--he'd miss out on a lot of birds.



Aline
http://sitekreator.com/zzfarms