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Seems we want our cake, and to eat it too! I read most of the article that started this topic a while ago, I think 2013? I had the great fortune to live in the heart of pheasant country in MN from 2003 until 2013. This I can tell you as true. The removal of most of the CRP acres there, (2010) caused an almost instant reduction in pheasants. $7.00 corn does not come around too often! A couple wet, cold springs reduced them yet more. I would imagine with all the increased ag activity the chems were a flowin! I go back and hunt every fall for a couple weeks. The last two years were OK. Not even in the same league as '04,5,6,7,8, 9. The death of a hundred cuts I think.

LGF, I want to take a moment to thank you for your concerns for African wildlife, not only lions. I also don't want to give the impression that I am not. I understand better the issues Africa faces with poaching and poisoning because of your posts.

But, I also wish the definitive answer could be reached as to the total impact that insecticides have had on quail, which was the OT. I have strong opinions, based upon a lifetime of watching quail almost daily, seeing how they interact with modern farming practices, and seeing how the local populations have changed with the changes in row cropping. I have seen quail populations fall, rise, and fall again. Odd thing is, when they fall they never go away completely. There are always quail, just a lower population. Those that are here still feed out into cropland where insecticides are used, nest in the edges of fields that are sprayed from time to time, and raise their chicks there. If the insecticides were as bad on them as some claim, there would be none left, and I would have found dead quail at least once every now and then. I haven't found a dead quail around my fields, that I can recall, in decades, and understand that I'm out there every day, compassing into the thousands of acres.

It really is not important that anyone take my observations as having any value. I'm considered just a "field jockey", and know nothing about quail, according to at least one here. But, I just grow weary of so much of the blame for the bobwhite quail decline being laid at the feet of the American farmer. Farmers grow what the market demands. The market demands it be cheap, relatively speaking. This puts extreme pressures on agriculture to produce it cheaper, so the margins can allow us to stay in business, and make a living.

In closing, I want to cite one example that may be of some interest to those who are truly interested in quail, and not just finding someone to be the scapegoat. There is a very large plantation that adjoins me on the east side of my land. It instituted a quail program in the early 80s, to bring them back. It succeeded. Burning, no insecticides, no release of pen raised birds, supplemental feeding, and creating ideal cover caused the population of wild birds to explode. It reached the point that they were finding and flushing between 6 and 7 covies per hour of having dogs on the ground. This lasted for several years. Walt Rosene, Tall Timbers........ all were amazed and thrilled at Wade Plantation's success. Then, with no changes to their practices, the populations crashed. All the experts were again called in to no avail. No answer has ever been found and today they're lucky to get six points on covies in a whole day. Intensive farming began there after the crash, including the use of all pesticides used by the other row crop farmers in our area. The quail hold their own at this point. No further decline, and................no real answers.

SRH

This is what happened in West Texas Stan
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140814191345.htm

Made it to OK
http://uplandjournal.ipbhost.com/topic/62631-parasitic-eye-worm-in-bobwhite-quail/

and this https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5338897/

and these https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jeu.12330

It does seem that nature's way is to adjust over-population with a parasitic or infectious agent.

Not to get OT but Ebola is back in DRC and ticks & mosquitos, and the diseases they carry, are taking over; Zika, West Nile, RMSF, Lyme, several forms of Ehrlichiosis, and Chikungunya
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2018/p0501-vs-vector-borne.html

Appears to me there are two choices.

Murmur. Exodus 16:11,12,13.

Sanctify yourselves against tomorrow. Numbers 11:18 read on to 32.
O.M

Thanks, Drew. I've been reading those articles on caecal and eye parasites for years, mostly out of the Rolling Plains Quail Research Ranch. I have some hope that because of the great research that has been done in Texas, that we are closer to finding an answer to the decline, not only the long term, but the sudden crashes in populations.

One of our members on this board, and a friend of mine, mel5141, is a resident of the area, and is intimately involved with the research ongoing. They had extraordinary quail seasons back to back, not good mind you, but extraordinary according to him. Bird counts remained super high. I couldn't book a hunt anywhere in that area of Texas, then all of a sudden they crashed again last year. Last I heard from him there was not a definitive answer as to the cause, but that's been a few months. Sure wish he would stop by and bring us up to date on the latest.

SRH

I don't get it. Here in south Jersey when DDT was used we had a pretty healthy quail and pheasant population. Declines started in the late 7o's and continued to present to the point that there aren't any in my area for years. I think DDT should be legal for limited uses. It's why we where bedbug free for many years until the third world invasion that we have brought them back.

You might consider moving tanky
http://www.state.nj.us/health/cd/documen...es_brochure.pdf
and a new one
https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/e...stay/542350002/

Come on out to AZ...other than Valley Fever...Hantavirus...Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever...and the Plague up on the Navajo Rez. With our current crop of C.A. 'migrants' Dengue is probably on the way too.

or just stay there and we'll ship you some enterotoxigenic E. Coli on lettuce from Yuma

Stan, if they ever figure out the quail issue I�d be happy as a pig in... well you know. I spent 20 years and more money than I want to admit to spending, trying to get quail established back onto my lands. Had three separate stable populations and a decent fourth one started. There was no herbicide or pesticide reason for their collapse because on three locations the nearest heavy farming exposure to them would have been 1/2 to 3/4 a mile. Every area suffered complete population collapse they year after the State DNR introduced turkeys into the area. Don�t know if the turkeys directly went after the quail, brought a parasite with them or just out competed them.

Turkeys are a big, flashy, easily seen bird which the DNR treats like a big game animal. It�s a money maker for them. Personally I wish they never introduced them onto my lands. There were no turkeys on our land going back for more than a hundred years that we know of. A rare Black Bear about 80 years ago but never turkeys. Quail in excellent numbers, rabbits and deer once they were introduced in the early 1930�s. Until then we had no deer at all. Now it�s deer, turkeys and nothing else.

I tried almost everything. Some things worked for a while and some things were a waste of time and money. I did conclude the State DNR quail expert may have read a lot of books and papers but did not have a clue what he was doing and could only parrot information given to him. If deer and turkeys were not such hearty critters, with a little DNR careful management, they be extinct in 20 years.

It's tough to find quail population data from the distant past when few people were at all concerned about declining numbers, but what data there is seems to suggest that the good old days for quail coincided with the years when DDT use was at its' highest point.




Pheasant populations in Iowa were also much higher when DDT was the crop duster's best friend. But it would be silly to suggest that the widespread use of DDT was the only factor, in the manner that lead shot is blamed for everything :



But don't tell that to Steve, or Brent, or Larry, or LGF, or they will pretend to ignore you. I certainly don't expect that they would bother to look at any of these links. But for those who have brains, and actually use them to think and reason, there is some very interesting reading here that illustrates the agenda that carries over into much of the junk science that has been used to impose lead ammunition bans:

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-truth-about-ddt-and-silent-spring

https://www.sites.google.com/site/paulroebling/home/the-ddt-fraud-and-other-liberal-lies

https://whatthecrap.wordpress.com/2007/07/03/the-ban-of-ddt-science-that-wasnt/

But, but, but... what about the decline in eagle populations when DDT was in use? Well, �Bald eagles were reportedly threatened with extinction in 1921 � 25 years before widespread use of DDT,� or �After 15 years of heavy and widespread usage of DDT, Audubon Society ornithologists counted 25 percent more eagles per observer in 1960 than during the pre-DDT 1941 bird census.�

I really liked the quote from Albert Einstein at the top of the second article. Here it is... suitable for framing... my gift to Brent:



P.S.-- For rocky mtn bill... it only took about 15 seconds to add that picture to this post. No shit!

Er, DDT whacks the hawks.
Quail numbers are up in those years.
No DDT, the hawks recover.
Then er, um, some how the quails take a whack.
Did I interpret something in that,
Or,
Do I just need help ?

O.M