You are right about the red-tails, but as plentiful as they are they are not much of a threat to bobwhite. They are so slow. They catch one occasionally, but it is the smaller hawks that do the real damage to quail. Cooper's and Sharp-shinned are quail killing machines. The numbers of them have literally exploded here in the last 15 years. They aren't the reason quail numbers crashed. That happened before their numbers increased so dramatically, but they certainly put pressure on the few coveys that are left. I have seen them catching quail in front of me. They are the next thing to a laser guided missile.

SRH

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