Mike, I don't know that the eye worms were what caused the wild bird populations to crash on the neighboring plantation to me. I did not mean to imply that and apologize if I did so. The point that I meant to make was that I have seen large landowners spend millions on wild quail habitat, burning . . . . in short, everything Tall Timbers and Walt Rosene said to do, only to see the population crash after a few years. Even very rich people who love quail get tired of throwing good money after bad eventually. Once introduced to how well hunting early released birds can be, that were reared under strictly controlled conditions, the owner finally said "Enough is enough", and began an early release program.
Wild bobs have so much to contend with, and the state and federal agencies only make it harder for them by being oppressively restrictive on landowners trying to control predators of quail. My life span has seen counties in GA that sanctioned paying a bounty for hawks killed to now fining a landowner for shooting one. It's ridiculous. They pay money to landowners who will set aside land for quail habitat and handcuff them in other ways. The small hawks (accipiters) . . . . including Cooper's, Sharp-shinned, etc. are among the deadliest predators of quail. But, because they are migratory (and the quail are not) they fall under federal regulations and woe be unto the man that is found to have killed one. I've seen them predate quail with my own eyes and they're deadly accurate. They hardly ever miss. The big old Redtails aren't much of a threat to quail but the smaller ones are awesomely deadly. Enough of my rant.
