quail

Jack.......

I don't know that the state does anything for habitat for deer or in general habitat for anything here in my neck of the state..s.e. Indiana..and I think that is where the problem actually starts at and that's at the state level...you tell me just "what do they do" here in s.e. Indiana for the bird hunter?? Oh I know they bought some land a bit farther down south from here and I 've been down there to hunt quail..never found a bird either!!!!!
I just think that they are focused to much on deer and killing of deer which is mainly directed to the state by insurance companys..all in all it's just a sad day in hell that we have let the state take over and thus you tell me where is it that all the kids are going to be able to hunt or as far as that goes what are they going to be able to hunt after you and I and the rest of these guys on here who are die hard hunters are dead and gone?? No where because hunting small game is not in the interest of the state..........

Jack..
I believe that the major or one of the major problems with the demise of quail has got to be with the coyote and especially the turkey population. It seems to me that since both of these have been on the up swing that the quail population has been declining.
For an example..this year while up in South Dakota pheasant hunting..I lease 14,000 acres from a guy up there to hunt on the first week of bird season,lasy year and this year the turkey population has exploded in that area and on one piece of the ground which there is over 7,000 acres there has not and I repeat "has not" been a single pheasant killed due to the increase of wild turkey in that area, there are no pheasants!!!!!.....now in the other 7,000 plus acres which is about 20 miles away there is not a single turkey to be found anywhere and the pheasant hunting is unbelieveable.
So I honestly believe the wild turkey which may be a good thing for some to hunt has taken away a very long tradition of bird hunting and that is both quail and pheasant.

HH - pheasants (and Hungarian Partridge and Chukars) are not native to North America either. There are several groups out there that want so called invasive species removed from our ecosystem. Sorry but as long as we consider the pheasant etc. non-native I'm going to have to oppose most invasive species programs except on a case-by-case basis (i.e. "kill the cats!!!).

Birddog - many people have commented that where ever turkeys flourish that the pheasant/quail/ruffed grouse/fill in the blank population has fallen. No one has ever been able to establish a direct link to the rise in turkey populations and the fall of other gamebird populations. Areas we hunt in Kansas were as you described the South Dakota scenario. The cause there was attributed to drought in certain areas and plentiful rain in others. I really don't know. As in most environmental crises I suspect that there is not a single cause for this effect.

Jack

She's a handful...she's pointing and retrieving her first birds. Tomorrow we go to the preserve and she gets to meet Mr. Pheasant for the first time. Should be interesting.

She's actuallly 8 months old this week




HatchetJack

1st, since when did turkeys become predators? That is ridiculous!!

2nd it is predators. Human predators. How can you expect to pound a given piece of property day in and day out and not negatively impact wild populations?

Raising birds and releasing them is only treating the symptom duck. It does nothing to address the fundamental problem of habitat degradation on private land and over use on public land.

Quail are declining nationwide. One only needs to look at the sterile agricultural practices and urban sprawl to figure out why.

Get informed.

What was Indiana's landscape back in the 40's and 50's? Small farms, small fields, many fence rows and inefficient farm equipment. That translates to millions of acres of early successional habitat (quail habitat). Turkeys declined, quail thrived.

As we moved into the 70's the landscape started changing again. Small farms were bought by bigger operators, fencerows were cleared, modern equipment became more efficient, modern herbicides really came into their own. Sure the early days of the farm program helped a lot with the set aside program, but that went away and so did the quail.

With regards to turkeys, in the 40'and 50's most of our forests were cleared or being cleared. Turkeys were all but extripated from IN (so were deer by the way). Also during this time, most state and federal land had been protected. While a lot of this acreage was early successional, it quicklly reverted to woodlands (lack of maintenance, logging restrictions etc..). By the 1980's IN really had more turkey habitat while quail were taking a beating due to habitat loss.

The narrow-minded and/or the uninformed hereby jumped to the erroneous conclusion that turkeys were the demise of quail. In fact the rise of the turkey (and deer) and decline of the quail is merely an affect of the cause (habitat reversion).

Edited...

I thought I did tell you it was habitat reversion. Not changed in 20 years? I doubt that. I can plainly see that you refuse to open your mind to other possibilities. Rage on young man, rage on! I wish you the best of luck in your quail & pheasant hunting.

I have to side with birddog predators have a major impact on quail. but i would say hawks kill as many as any . kind of curious how old you are dmd anddo you hunt quail?

Cause they taste like eagle (chicken).