Originally Posted by graybeardtmm3
Originally Posted by coosa
Originally Posted by JHolland
I have 94 acres of twenty year old pine trees. Just had them third row thinned a couple years ago. There is a very good habitat for quail here but I am hesitant to buy and release them. I don't know how many would survive. I plant small grains every year for turkey and deer so there would be food. Quail are expensive to buy. Any thoughts on it?


JHolland

What is your neighbor's land like, and do they have any quail on them? I have 400 acres in central Alabama, and I have hunted on it every year since the mid 60s. We had a lot of quail when I was a kid, and then we had a lot again in the late 70s after most of it was clearcut. Once the planted pines were about 5 years old, the quail population went way down and has never recovered.

About 20 years ago, I made a real effort to restore the quail and turkey population. I had 22 acres of the pines clearcut and turned those areas back into fields, planted field borders, started a yearly prescribed fire plan for the timber land, and planted lots of wildlife plots of various things. We have seen a definite improvement in the turkey population, but not the quail. From my experience, and a great deal of reading and talking to others, I believe it's possible to really help the turkeys on a small farm, but you need a lot more land to make a positive impact on quail. I don't know the minimum size, but I think it's into the thousands of acres.

In places where a lot of landowners are managing for quail, improving a small farm can make a difference. If you are in an area where nobody else is doing it, I don't know if it's possible. For some reason that I don't fully understand, the quail need to be part of a large population to thrive.

We still have a few around and it's not unusual to see one in the summer, but a huntable population just doesn't exist. I think you could have a lot of fun releasing pen raised birds and hunting them over the next few weeks, but I doubt it's going to do much towards establishing what could become a wild population. I have thought of doing this too, and probably would if I still had a dog. Try it and tell us how it works out.


I have long believed that the single most destructive change, regarding bobwhite quail populations, is the change over from varied traditional crops, on smaller farms/plots - to larger and larger stands of plantation pines. i have family in north louisiana who are second generation tree farm operators...and hunters - and i understand the economic basis for that model of operation. but, as coosa stated, once the trees begin to canopy the ground (i'd say 6-8 years), there is less and less food available - and then follows a looong stretch where the forest becomes almost sterile.

the good old days of wild quail hunting was linked to checkerboarded terrain, with fields and forests interspersed, and small land holders growing a much broader range of row crops. many other elements are involved in the rooting out of quails - but the lack of widely available foodstuffs is crucial.

I have no doubt that the conversion of so much land to pine plantations coincided with the reduction in the quail population. That was made even worse by the changes the timber industry made in site prep. In the 60s and 70s most of the site prep was done with dozers. It caused the loss of some topsoil in places, but the disturbance of the ground resulted in good habitat for quail for several years. Once they switched to using herbicides for site prep, that benefit was lost.

They aren't gonna go back to dozers, so I don't know of anything that can be done to change this.