I'm with treblig; I believe a balance can and should be struck between conventional farming and farming game for recreational use. Some farmers strike a very decent balance between a working farm and a fee-and-subsidy driven "preserve" which combines stocking with a pheasant-friendly habitat that allows some carryover providing some essentially wild birds.

I don't know much about the quail hunting side of this, but assume that some such arrangement might be, and probably has been reached.

Point is, we "wild" purists shouldn't spit on such operations, even if they aren't quite to our taste. What should be encouraged is a spectrum of such operations to fit all tastes, kinda like the restaurant business. And we should encourage public policy and private sentiment to support them (kinda like the restaurant business). I know that there are and have been such efforts. But us hunters need to get fully behind them, for the sake of the sport and the way of life that it represents.

As you know, this is old stuff in the Old Countries (I think the Romans stocked pheasants). But we need to do it better, as we have many things--keep it available to any Joe or Jane that really wants it. That's been our genius and I trust we haven't lost it.