With the spring rains, good cover, and the projected 80 degree temps next week with the chance of rain, my hopes of a rebuilding season for the quail and hopefully pheasant will happen. It can't get much better than this for upland birds.
I have no idea what has happened to the quail. I lived in South Texas for a few years back in the 70's. We had the hottest and driest weather I have personally ever lived in. The ranch my father in law worked on had lots and lots of coyotes, several bob cats, javalina, wild hogs, and rattle snakes. They will all eat quail or quail eggs or both. The quail were everywhere. He and I could get our limits with hardly any problem. Now, we think the drought and predators are what's happening to our quail. I'm not saying what is the problem cause I sure don't know. All I know is the way it was around Alice, Texas back in the late 70's.
They have done more research than one can image down there on quail, I guess they never got the answer we seek. Or its one we don't want to listen to.
I often wonder if the quail down there have taken a hit like they have here. I haven't been back since around 78 or 79 but at that time you could get your limit without a dog. They just seemed to be everywhere. I lived in Alice but we actually hunted about 90 miles south of Alice around La Gloria. My FIL worked for a guy that had a 23,000 acre ranch in that area.
We have a place in northern Lincoln County. Had it about two years, there three days a week or so. I've seen way more coyote than quail. I remember back in the day they were plentiful.
Back in the 70's when one could find a covey in the ditch every quarter of a mile, there was bounty's on coyotes, and fur prices were high enough a trapper could make a living from them.
Farmers had small acreages with poor farming practices for the most part, leaving weedy corners and fence rows. They put in wind rows of trees to stop wind erosion in the 30's, that grew up in weeds and grass over vast areas.
Now with no-till farming, of thousands of acres, fence rows, and wind rows removed for every last bushel of grain, County's mowing the ditches right during nesting season, it has to have an effect, yet in Osage county, there are millions of acres with the same habitat from the 30's that don't have quail either.
Something is going on, and Texas is in no better shape.
Farmers had small acreages with poor farming practices for the most part, leaving weedy corners and fence rows. They put in wind rows of trees to stop wind erosion in the 30's, that grew up in weeds and grass over vast areas.
Now with no-till farming, of thousands of acres, fence rows, and wind rows removed for every last bushel of grain, County's mowing the ditches right during nesting season, it has to have an effect, yet in Osage county, there are millions of acres with the same habitat from the 30's that don't have quail either.
Something is going on, and Texas is in no better shape.
I saw a couple at Lone Chimney when looking at the water last week (or lack of water as it is).
The last covey of quail I "saw" was one I nearly stepped on while walking in to archery hunt one morning near Coweta.... talk about getting your heart rate going.....
I've had that "come to Jesus" moment as well. Pheasant will do the same. LOL...
If a pen raised quail is released into the wild, it's life expectancy is about 48 hours. The ODWC found this out a few decades ago down at Sandy Sanders. They released thousands just a few months before the season opened and not a single banded bird was harvested by hunters. Not one.
I drew out and hunted Packsaddle about 8 years in a row, and got to know the biologist out there pretty well during that time. That guy knew more about quail than anyone I ever met. He had to start using captured wild birds for his call back traps because the wild birds would kill the pen raised birds as soon as they got in the trap.
He told some great stories and related some very interesting things about quail and how they live. You had to turn in the crops, and unless the weather was just horrible, he very rarely found any food plot items in the crops. They hung around the plots, because of the edges they created, but they very rarely ever ate what was planted there.
He was very knowledgeable, and didn't mind sharing what he knew.
In short, releasing pen raised quail into the wild doesn't do anything except feed the predators. He did say you could relocate a wild covey, and they would do fine.
