Lowell,
I can understand your reasons. I haven't had to worry about quail populations except year to year fluctuations which are dependant on rainfall and predators mainly. My goal is to get water out on the property and maintain these tanks for the quail. Their feed is plentiful. We're in a bit of a drought this year, even though it rained a bit today out there on us.
BTW, the 3 of us took 4 birds total. I took 2 with the 410 including a really long crosser in an open field. I also took a cottontail with the 410. That's it. We were cold and wet, but had a good time trying like heck to shoot a limit. It took serval miles of walking to just find birds in the rain and cold. We were disappointed not seeing any birds for the first few hours, but once we got into them, it was on. We were really having a good time shooting the junipers up and only getting 4 birds
