Quail

[chimneyman]

Just wanting to see what everyone.s opinion is on why they no longer exist. I have heard from TWRA and other experts that it;s habitat loss. BULL To show my age i remember when everyone had a couple Bird Dogs and it was possible to leave the house walking and kill a limit. Places i hunted 30-40 years ago still look the same today as they did then. I'm talking 5-600 acre farms planted in corn beans and briars. Catoosa and Chuck Swan used to have plenty of Birds never had to go that far though. The Habitat there sure hasn't changed and Birds can no longer hunted at Chuck Swan. In my opinion which is just that there has to be some disease or something that caused the birds to become sterile.There is plenty of good habitat left with zero birds With all the Deer hunters planting food plots etc there should be a covey in every plot ( i wish ) Whats your opinion Thanks

 

[JAD]

I am certainly not an expert, but 40 years ago hawks and owls were routinely shot on sight (at least in some parts of the country). We also have coyotes now, but foxes were probably more plentiful back then. Just my guess.

 

[tellico28]

I don't know if this is true or not, but I was told that a factor in low quail numbers is fire ants. Could be cause years back we always seemed to have quail on our property and now we don't. But we do have a lot of fire ants. It seems as soon as I think I have a mound killed out, another pops up.

 

[turkeyhunter]

same with turkeys in southern wayne co. they magically went from being everywhere to not very many. I agree about the hawk and owl idea. I had a hawk pick up my jake decoy last season.
There is a dove field near by. There are about 5 hawks out there dive bombing the doves daily. On my hunting lease last winter we had a cut over holding a large group of quail, morning noon and evening there was 3 or 4 hawks flying about 8 ft above cut over, they wiped them out. Hawks clean out game birds in a hurry.

 

[chimneyman]

Thanks for your replies. But there has always been Hawks and Owls and we had a lot of Birds. I can see Fire ants being a problem with just hatched birds but Georgia Texas etc had Fire ants and still had a lot of birds. I may be in left field but i think it's a fertilizer, Roundup or something fairly new that either killed the Birds or reduced hatch success. However our Grouse population in E Tn is about as bad as our Bird population which makes me think it may be a virus of some kind Bird Flu lol Thanks

 

[DntBrnDPig]

It's sad. I got a bird dog but have to pay ~$90 to get him on birds.

 

[PickettSFHunter]

I wish I knew what the problem was so maybe it could be dealt with. I have one big covey that uses one of my properties and I try to help them out the best I can.

 

[FOX FIRE]

I remeber when I was a teenager (in the 80s) they were everywher, I could sit on the front porch & whistle them up, coveys could be heard all day long "talk'n" back & forth to each other.

As far as habitat changes thers been some but nothing major, with all the timber thats been logged out in the last few years ther should be plenty of new growth for them to hide in and open places for feeding & scratching in.

I think the predators have taken ther toll, hawks, foxes, coon, possum & now days coyotes, the predator population has exploded.

 

[blountcountyboy]

No one traps any more and farmers want nice clean fence rows. Farm equipment that catches 95% of the crops doesn't help either. Coons and possums take a MAJOR toll on quail eggs and about any other ground nesting bird. Back in the 70's and 80's fur was still in and even thou by the 80's those animals were gaining in numbers they were still down enough to keep the quail numbers high. Grouse are a weird critter and have a 7 year high and low cycle. Google that for more information.
Fence rows that look nice to the human eye will not hold any type of wild life. The uglier, nastier, harder to get threw they are the more wild life they will attract.
The old combines were lucky to catch 75% of the grain that they harvested. I was at times worried about being accused of hunting over a baited field after some of these combines came through.
I have saw hawks catch quail from the air on more than once but, I don't believe that they caused much of a decrease in the quail population.

Something that I've saw as an increased trend is shooting out of complete coveys. People will get on a covey of 3-4 birds and simply wipe them out. Now, there are no breeding pairs left. Land is also becoming more fragmented and it's not as easy to chase birds all over creation. Birds aren't stupid and will move towards areas that aren't getting hunting pressure and that leaves more pressure on the fewer coveys that hunters can gain access to.

I gave up trying to quail and grouse hunt because of these issues. I could get out of high school and be on a covey of birds before it was supper time. I remember the 100+ bird covey that I kept to myself for years and only picked at them here and there not killing more than a couple before moving on. That covey stayed strong until a group of guys gained access to the property and killed dozens and dozens of birds hunting them every weekend relentlessly.

 

[FOX FIRE]

Never gave the farm machinery a thought, I could see wher quail could benifit from that.

I miss get'n to listen to them in teh summer, I heard one lest year while fish'n & told my wife thats something you dont hear much anymore, she & my daughter didnt even know what it was, for me to hear it was nearly like a trip back in time.

Suppose the quail is in any better shape in different parts of the country ??

 

[timberjack86]

I was hunting this spring in bark camp barrens and there was quail everywhere. But I dont know how many will be left by fall. But they were whisteling and I could see them darting through the grass with my binos.

 

[DntBrnDPig]

I was working Bonnaroo, in Manchester Tennessee, a few years ago and had one waking me up every morning. It was music to my hears... the first day or two. But this dude would not stop. I wanted to go get my dog and take care of him.

 

[tellico4x4]

We probably have 20-30 coveys on 3,500 acres, Just about every food plot now has a covey. For whatever reason, they have been on a steady increase at our place for the last 3 years. The population has increased enough that I even planted millet and other small seed for them this spring. I grew up bird hunting and it sure is nice to have them around again.

 

[catman529]

I know a covey in my neighborhood that is on HOA property and I would love to hunt them but that's out of the question since it's almost impossible without a shotgun... I have heard the bob-white call many times this spring/summer while fishing or working on bank access to fishing holes down there by the field where the covey lives.

 

[Kimberman]

Feral cats
Hawks
Fire ants
Coyotes
Loss of land


All of that stuff hurts quail.

 

[Diehard Hunter]

There is one critter that has come on like gangbusters since fur prices dropped......raccoons. Raccoon numbers have been on the rise since the 80s. As a matter of fact, it was hard to find a decent coon population prior to the 80s. Now they are everywhere.

If you combine the lost of nesting cover like broom sedge, the improved efficiency of harvest machinery, the increase in predators, and the clean fence row/field edge mentality of farmers, it is no wonder quail numbers are down. They have been punched, kicked, starved and stabbed. It is a wonder we have any left.

 

[chimneyman]

It's true we have lost a lot of Habitat But where we still have good Habitat we don't have Birds One farm here in Blount Co owned by a long time Bird hunter (50 yrs plus) farmed with birds in mind leaving plenty of cover food etc has zero now where for years it had 6-8 coveys every year I guess i agree it;s probably a combination of several things i just wish i could let my Grandson walk into a covey flush behind a couple of good dogs

 

[TheLBLman]

. . . . opinion is on why they no longer exist.

IMO, the single biggest reason is FESCUE.
Some would say this falls under "habitat loss", but it's also a major food loss since the fescue has displaced so many once native plants that quail had evolved to thrive both living among and feeding upon. Not only do quail have little to eat with the invasion of fescue, but it's not good cover for them either.

Now add everything else previously mentioned to FESCUE, and it all adds up to very few quail compared to the pre-fescue days.

Perhaps no other plant has done so much harm to Tennessee wildlife as fescue.

. . . But where we still have good Habitat we don't have Birds . . . .

I'd speculate the dominant grass in that otherwise good habitat is now fescue.

 

[Headhunter]

House cats are one of the main enemies of quail. When I was younger I shot house cats on sight in the woods.

I believe farming techniques has something to do with it.

No doubt fescue does not help. If there was a quail population now like when I was in my late teen's early twenties, I would hunt them and almost nothing else. My nickname in high school was bird dog if that tells you anything.

 

[pressfit]

I used to trap a bunch back in the 80's... listen to a bird hunter and us trappers were scum of the earth.. little did they know what a service we were doing to keep their bird population up.. when the fur price fell the quail numbers did also.. I havent seen one in giles county in a long long time... I never met a varmint that didnt love a nice mess of fresh quail eggs..