HOW TO HAVE MORE QUAIL
Why Did Quail Populations Decline?
EDITOR’S
NOTE: You can hunt quail as well as deer and turkey
on your hunting lease or at your hunting club with very
little investment and not much work. According to Dr.
Bill Palmer, game bird specialist at Tall Timbers Research
Station in Tallahassee, Florida, "Most outdoorsmen
will be satisfied to go out with their buddies and a
bird dog and find two to three coveys of quail in a
half-day's hunt. Hunters can create this type of hunting
ground on all kinds of forest land with minimal effort."
This week, we’ll learn how to have more quail
on the property where you hunt and the history behind
why the quail populations across the U.S. have declined.
Dr.
Palmer explains that, “The primary factor that
caused the bobwhite quail to decline in the Southeast
was habitat change due to the lack of fires, the change
of management on farm fields and the closing up of the
forest canopies so that there was a reduction of ground
cover. Quail depend on a mixture of grasses, weeds and
shrubs for their habitat to have nesting, breeding and
feeding.” In the early days, landowners burned
their property as part of an annual land-management
practice to control vermin, create more forage for animals,
including cattle and eliminate insects. But then social,
political and liability issues spurned the decrease
of the use of fire in the woods. However, Palmer mentions
that some states have passed
legislation to provide for a landowner’s right
to burn his property. “The primary benefit from
a quail’s perspective of fire is that fire makes
the upland pine habitat found in the South more suitable
for quail by helping to control hardwood encroachment
and to refresh the ground cover to produce more grasses
and weeds that are beneficial for quail.”
Researchers have found that one of the best ways to
bring back quail is if you plant small grain or clover
for deer and turkey in green fields, don’t plow
that green field under in the spring and plant a summer
crop for wildlife. Instead, let the ground go fallow
to allow the weeds to grow through the spring and the
summer. Then you can come back in the fall and re-plant
your green fields. But do keep the first three to five
rows in your green field in weeds. Also, as mentioned
earlier this week, guard against sweetgum growth. If
sweetgums aren’t managed for three years, the
tree can be virtually impossible to get
rid of, even with fire. Even though fire will top-kill
the sweetgums, the root system will continue to grow.
You may have to cut down the sweetgums with chainsaws
and then spray with herbicide to kill the root systems
of the sweetgums.
TOMORROW: WHAT’S THE BIG LIE ABOUT QUAIL MANAGEMENT
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