doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Quail can't compete with farming....

Fire ants really hurt the quail in Georgia! Bobby

Fire ants really hurt in Alabama also.When the Armadillos came in,I hoped they would eat the ants,but it looks like they will eat every quail egg they can find.
Mike

Everyone has their own opinion about where the quail went. From fire-ants, to cow-birds, to armadillos, to turkeys, to pine monocultures, to fencerow to fencerow farming, and on and on.

I think its just too many people living everywhere and developing everything. No diversity of habitat (edges).

Instead we have fragmented habitat which may be fine in small tracts, but without the capacity (room) to allow the "spring breakup" of the related coveys and mixing of unrelated individuals to reliably rear healthy young. Now you have yet another random opinion!...Geo

My opinion wasn't' random. All I mentioned has come from Missouri Dept. of Conservation at one time or another. Usually if it makes sense there's more than an element of truth to it...same as what you said, that makes sense.

Well said, George.

As a production row-crop farmer I see this issue from both sides, literally. It grieves me to see what has happened to quail in my beloved South. OTOH, it grieves me to see how much farmland is being lost to urban sprawl every year, heck, every day. As Geo. said, human population is increasing at an alarming rate. People must be fed. That requires farmland to produce it. For every acre lost to residences and shopping malls an acres' worth of production must come from somewhere else. This is only possible by two means. An acre of land must be put into production that previously was not, or yields per acre have to increase.

When the choice is people paying very high food prices for short supplies of food, or quail habitat being put into production, you know who loses. Gentleman Bob. The pine forested land like Adam shows, that his family was leasing and lost, is not typical of the pine land being put back into production across the South. That land in the pictures was being managed for quail, to some degree or another. Most of the pine land being put back into production agriculture is pine plantations, which are a virtual desert for wildlife of any kind, with the possible exception of fox squirrels. Row crop agriculture will actually be better for the game and gamebirds than pine plantations with 700 trees per acre and absolutely no food production for quail.

SRH

There is no one reason for the decline and no one answer to fix the problem. All of the issues mentioned above have played a role. HOWEVER, in my part of the country, habitat loss and degradation are the #1 reasons.

Here is a satellite image showing the area around our lease. You can see that nearly the entire area is covered in irrigated farmland. In the "dry corners" of the fields you'll find pastures of thick bermuda grass or densely planted pines. The pines, if managed properly, can provide excellent cover for quail... but that rarely happens. So it is clear to see why bobwhites have declined. They have nowhere to live because the landscape is dominated by three types of cover.... farmland, pasture grasses, or dense pine plantations. The blocks of pineywoods that are left are the only areas the birds have left. And as you can see in my first post, the last remaining sections are slowly being cut and converted. It's not a pretty picture.



This video sums it up pretty well. Stan, it primarily talking about your neck of the woods... Burke County GA. But these facts hold true across the South and much of the country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRc-ojnMd...mp;feature=plcp

Adam

Right on, Adam. Quality Wildlife Services was started and is owned and operated by a dear old friend of mine, Jim Evans. He developed the Anchor Covey Release System, and has marketed it for many years now. Jim is the most knowledgable man about the Bobwhite Quail that I have ever known.

I am just about to call him for some advice on how to handle a pine plantation that I clear cut last Spring. I'll tell him you posted the link.

Thanks, SRH

The satellite photo unflinchingly illustrates what thousands of words try to describe. As for population expansion in Georgia, in 1970, there were approximately 4.5 million folks. In 2010, 9.6 million. Gil

You think they ate them all....

Dunno jOe, but I ate my share!...Geo