Prairie Drifter
Well-known member
Another year has come and gone and soon another quail season with it. The W-2's have arrived and it gets a guy thinking if a refund is coming or if Uncle Sam is going to ask for more. Well, quail managers are also doing the math for the season, trying to decide if good investments were made, if sufficient savings have been held back. It's all about the math!
I'm sure by now that you are wondering just what PD is talking about. It all boils down to bird population math. I drove by a pickup on the area today 3 times trying to catch up with the hunters that occupied it. Never happened to get them tracked down, but it got me to thinking about the effects of their trip. Many times this season we have all enjoyed the pictures and videos of successful hunts and the pile of birds on the tailgate, dog box, farm implement, or stone post. Unfortunately, too many of us use the size of that pile as the primary measurement of that success. Problems arrive when our success this season affects our productivity for next season. When you talk about public land, all too often the math doesn't add up.
In general, quail populations can be harvested to the tune of 40-60% without affecting next year's population. Where your land falls within that range is affected my many variables. However, as we get into late season, the birds we harvest may well be costing us population potential next season. Early in the season our harvest is often considered compensatory. That means that the birds we are taking home would have not made it to next years' breeding season anyway. Later in the season the math changes. Once that last compensatory bird is harvested, we're in the red. Every bird after that bird may well remove an entire covey from next season's population. This is called additive mortality. On public land I think we're into additive mortality some time late in November or early December most years. These late season hunts, though satisfying to the soul, may well deepen the deficit of next season's bird numbers. It's hard on wildlife managers to have the habitat perfect for quail production, have weather that is conducive for production, yet not be able to achieve a robust population because not enough breeding birds are there to fill that habitat. Quail are density dependent breeders, producing more or larger broods in response to low populations, but they may well not be able to overcome such a large deficit.
The same conditions might occur on private land too. This can happen from a single group making too many trips and taking too many birds, or it could be from a number of groups that don't account for the other groups' harvest. On some well managed private holdings, birds are estimated preseason and a number is set for the annual harvest. Once that number has been taken, the season is closed. This is much harder to do in a public ground setting. WIHA is susceptible too, but often isn't held to the same parameters. Why? Many of the WIHA tracts are smaller and the population is buffered by more lightly hunted adjoining ground. Quail, by nature, are not the best public land birds. They are much less mobile than pheasants and, being "gentleman bob", are often more susceptible to the gun. Add to that the protection we give pheasant hens and their more polygamous nature, and pheasants are a much better bird for public situations.
There are many ways sportsmen try to control their harvest. The best is mentioned above and involves setting a harvest goal based on population surveys and sticking to it. Another is when hunters often don't shoot into smaller coveys. This is often most successful in preventing environmental and predatory death within that day, not overharvest. Again, math is in order. Suppose you have a population of 36 quail in 3-12 bird coveys. If you were to never shoot into a covey of 8 or less birds, it is feasible with daily recombination of coveys that you would end the season with only one covey of 8 birds. That's a harvest of almost 78%.
Tax season is upon us! Time to take stock of where we are and where we want to be. Hopefully, we didn't over-spend our limited quail budget this season and saved a nest-egg for the coming year. So too, it is time to plan investments like prescribed burns, disked strips, grazing, and other projects that might stack the deck for a successful breeding season to come.
I'm sure by now that you are wondering just what PD is talking about. It all boils down to bird population math. I drove by a pickup on the area today 3 times trying to catch up with the hunters that occupied it. Never happened to get them tracked down, but it got me to thinking about the effects of their trip. Many times this season we have all enjoyed the pictures and videos of successful hunts and the pile of birds on the tailgate, dog box, farm implement, or stone post. Unfortunately, too many of us use the size of that pile as the primary measurement of that success. Problems arrive when our success this season affects our productivity for next season. When you talk about public land, all too often the math doesn't add up.
In general, quail populations can be harvested to the tune of 40-60% without affecting next year's population. Where your land falls within that range is affected my many variables. However, as we get into late season, the birds we harvest may well be costing us population potential next season. Early in the season our harvest is often considered compensatory. That means that the birds we are taking home would have not made it to next years' breeding season anyway. Later in the season the math changes. Once that last compensatory bird is harvested, we're in the red. Every bird after that bird may well remove an entire covey from next season's population. This is called additive mortality. On public land I think we're into additive mortality some time late in November or early December most years. These late season hunts, though satisfying to the soul, may well deepen the deficit of next season's bird numbers. It's hard on wildlife managers to have the habitat perfect for quail production, have weather that is conducive for production, yet not be able to achieve a robust population because not enough breeding birds are there to fill that habitat. Quail are density dependent breeders, producing more or larger broods in response to low populations, but they may well not be able to overcome such a large deficit.
The same conditions might occur on private land too. This can happen from a single group making too many trips and taking too many birds, or it could be from a number of groups that don't account for the other groups' harvest. On some well managed private holdings, birds are estimated preseason and a number is set for the annual harvest. Once that number has been taken, the season is closed. This is much harder to do in a public ground setting. WIHA is susceptible too, but often isn't held to the same parameters. Why? Many of the WIHA tracts are smaller and the population is buffered by more lightly hunted adjoining ground. Quail, by nature, are not the best public land birds. They are much less mobile than pheasants and, being "gentleman bob", are often more susceptible to the gun. Add to that the protection we give pheasant hens and their more polygamous nature, and pheasants are a much better bird for public situations.
There are many ways sportsmen try to control their harvest. The best is mentioned above and involves setting a harvest goal based on population surveys and sticking to it. Another is when hunters often don't shoot into smaller coveys. This is often most successful in preventing environmental and predatory death within that day, not overharvest. Again, math is in order. Suppose you have a population of 36 quail in 3-12 bird coveys. If you were to never shoot into a covey of 8 or less birds, it is feasible with daily recombination of coveys that you would end the season with only one covey of 8 birds. That's a harvest of almost 78%.
Tax season is upon us! Time to take stock of where we are and where we want to be. Hopefully, we didn't over-spend our limited quail budget this season and saved a nest-egg for the coming year. So too, it is time to plan investments like prescribed burns, disked strips, grazing, and other projects that might stack the deck for a successful breeding season to come.
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