Covey Headquarter

U

UplandorDie

New member
Warning! This post is based upon a frustrating day at work with a landowner. Just my thoughts and this post is My opinion of the fad of our society's view on conservation.

Anyone look at the winter edition of MDC's Covey Headquarter's? In the last year they just started an interesting study between Quail Emphasis Areas (QEA) and prairie landscapes. Guess What? Prairie areas produced more quail nests and the birds nested earlier!

I don't know...I am very grateful for the MDC and I think they do a great job! I hunt many of the QEA's and have had success, but like this last weekend, I walked 5 hours on one of these areas and didn't see a bird! I will be interested to see what this study reveals in the next couple of years.

There is such a "Tree Hugger" initiative in this country, and guess what, the landscape in the United States and in NW Missouri and many other regions of Missouri were predominantly a prairie landscape! Missouri's forests have DOUBLED in volume since the 1970's! It's not the turkeys eating the quail. The habitat has increased for turkeys, thus more turkeys, less quail habitat, thus less quail. The landscape has changed and the demise of upland birds is primarily due to farming practices: large scale-corporate farms, no-till planting, and glyphosate ready crops, but it is obvious to me that we have not gotten across the importance of prairie habitat. Where is the initiative for restoring our prairies?? It's not there!

I have observed these people giving advice to landowners, telling them to plant 500 Pin Oaks per acre on their land to reforest an area that wasn't a forest in the first place!!! Trees aren't the answer for every landscape, reforesting an area that was not originally a forest doesn't save the world. It's not all about trees and until the importance of prairie habitat is expressed to private landowners, quail will suffer.

Boys!! We have a lot of work to do.

Happy Thanksgiving...Save the quail, eat a turkey! ; )
UOD
 
I'm all for MDC creating and maintaining the prairie CA's. What was the conflict you had with a landowner?

I talked to one of the CA area workers a couple of weeks ago, she was saying that there was quite a bit of rain in July right about the time the quail were nesting that may have caused some issues with the hatch on some of the CA's.
 
I don't know a whole lot about quail, but for pheasant chick survival you absolutely have to have bugs available for them to eat. That is why the pollinator acres are so important. In the past, we had enough weeds to provide the bug/chick habitat in our agricultural acres... but if you've looked under a row of corn lately you'll see we aren't leaving much (anything). First year (weedy!) CRP plantings hold the most birds early in the year. If quail have the same insect needs at a young age - it wouldn't surprise me if they'd prefer prairie as most of our forest has a crappy understory.

Just a thought.
 
We have this discussion before. The actual facts are, that Turkey and Deer are the BIG " bell cows", of conservation organizations, Missouri being no exception. Big press, big revenue from out of staters, ( less now since everybody is lousy with deer and turkey). By the time it became obvious that quail and pheasants were on a decline, it took 10 years to get organized to make an effort. Meanwhile the commission was reintroducing prairie chickens, again a token population, will never be hunted in any of our lifetimes. Last year we stocked a bunch of elk, and their problems, car-elk collisions, crop depredation a cross the department will gladly suffer for photo opportunities for the press. Meanwhile they to a wait and see poster on where or not we will try to re-establishing ruffed grouse on areas of the state, that's the last bird hunting season we lost, a couple of years ago, now "study" it. Ruffed Grouse is "studied out", thousand volumes are written and any fool can figure it out. The prairie chicken habitat, and an effort to tailor to ruffed grouse, would help quail them selves, ironically. We now have "nature centers" in all metropolitan areas, fishing for trout in wintertime ponds, we have a conservation commission who has it's own funding to be independent, thanks to a tax we Missourians authorized, I voted for it, I thought it would produce more habitat, and more conservation areas. Ha Ha! counties revolt at more public areas, claiming the tax rate will be lower, MDC made a pledge to keep the tax rate the same. Still they do not use the funds for that. They are doing the "quail emphasis" areas, these are a handful of 17 areas. a lot of these are treed, have vast fields of fescue bordered crop fields, where they chainsawed down a 10-20 feet of trees along the edge. This produced more turkey and deer, where we could bulldozed out vast areas of secondary timber and create small fields that are beneficial to quail, ruffed grouse, deer and the turkey, the trifecta! We and the politicians have little input, see that independent tax, probably better the politicians don't, The staff is professional, ready to converse with you, past that who knows! I relayed my thoughts on the quail issue two years ago. We had habitat, habitat, habitat, drilled into our brains, I suggested the weather, like cold wet springs were a huge determining factor, they have reached the same conclusion, probably from the same study I read from the quail symposium, in Ames, Tenn. Long term habitat is the question, even now, in bad reproductive years, we will do better in great habitat. Nesting and brooding are our major factors. The covey headquarters are a fools mission, believe me the headquarters under cedars, low hung pin oaks, in the middle of fallow fields. More jungle we can do without. The issue is the conservation department creates a mosaic of topography which is lower on nesting, and brooding, and more favorable to preserving the birds that survive! Therefore if you hunt these, the birds are the devilishly hard to find, jump early like pheasants, fly like heck into some 80 acre fortress, or deep into the timber. I sympathize with that philosophy because it's a wildlife area, not a shooting area to thinned out by the first party of hunters. What we need is more bulldozers, fields left to weed production, less commercial agriculture ground, Disking to promote weed and insects, and fire! Lots and lots of fire! In the Ozarks timber harvest, clearcut would be best! with interseeded native grass, or pasture lespedeza, which every fenceline in SW Missouri had in the 1960's. The Missouri Department goal is .50 quail per acre, in Quail Emphasis areas. I doubt we will make it! We need a wholesale effort, and commitment to gets to 2-4 million quail harvest, like in the 1950's-1970's, with 250,000 hunters, rather than the 15,000-18,000 hunters and a 200,000 quail harvest! Sorry I droned on!
 
just got back in from a so called quail emphasis area second time there and have yet to see a bird
The MDC always has a excuse on why the quail population decreases each year. the MDC needs to look at pictures on their areas back in the 80's
8 rows of the crops were left by the farmers. you could walk in the fence rows and ditches ( now they got them where so u can't even walk in them)
and the woods (now they just cut down the trees and again you cant walk thru them without falling down)
I can on and on, sorry but if the MDC quail experts were coaching they would all have been fired a long time ago
so when people brag on them I tell them they are terrible
 
after hearing this....I'm glad I havent made the trip from IL to hunt any of those....I did some research last year on those "emphasis" areas and talked to some DNR people......I can go to any of the state land that I hunt in IL and find quail....thanks for NOTHING MO.
 
UplandorDie said:
Warning! This post is based upon a frustrating day at work with a landowner. Just my thoughts and this post is My opinion of the fad of our society's view on conservation.

Anyone look at the winter edition of MDC's Covey Headquarter's? In the last year they just started an interesting study between Quail Emphasis Areas (QEA) and prairie landscapes. Guess What? Prairie areas produced more quail nests and the birds nested earlier!

I don't know...I am very grateful for the MDC and I think they do a great job! I hunt many of the QEA's and have had success, but like this last weekend, I walked 5 hours on one of these areas and didn't see a bird! I will be interested to see what this study reveals in the next couple of years.

There is such a "Tree Hugger" initiative in this country, and guess what, the landscape in the United States and in NW Missouri and many other regions of Missouri were predominantly a prairie landscape! Missouri's forests have DOUBLED in volume since the 1970's! It's not the turkeys eating the quail. The habitat has increased for turkeys, thus more turkeys, less quail habitat, thus less quail. The landscape has changed and the demise of upland birds is primarily due to farming practices: large scale-corporate farms, no-till planting, and glyphosate ready crops, but it is obvious to me that we have not gotten across the importance of prairie habitat. Where is the initiative for restoring our prairies?? It's not there!

I have observed these people giving advice to landowners, telling them to plant 500 Pin Oaks per acre on their land to reforest an area that wasn't a forest in the first place!!! Trees aren't the answer for every landscape, reforesting an area that was not originally a forest doesn't save the world. It's not all about trees and until the importance of prairie habitat is expressed to private landowners, quail will suffer.

Boys!! We have a lot of work to do.

Happy Thanksgiving...Save the quail, eat a turkey! ; )
UOD
Click to expand...


I would say that you hit the nail in this post. We have been taught and teach our kids that planting trees is the thing to do. Maybe where there were trees originally. But like you said why put trees where there never were any to begin with?

On my grandparents old farm I remember very few trees, and the pasture was kept burned off about every year. This was back in the 70's. Now I look at google earth and it doesn't even look like the old farm Overgrown with trees and brush. This is in an area of KS that was traditionally the place to go to hunt quail. Over the years the scrub brush and trees have moved in and the quail have died off.
 
duckn66 said:
I would say that you hit the nail in this post. We have been taught and teach our kids that planting trees is the thing to do. Maybe where there were trees originally. But like you said why put trees where there never were any to begin with?

On my grandparents old farm I remember very few trees, and the pasture was kept burned off about every year. This was back in the 70's. Now I look at google earth and it doesn't even look like the old farm Overgrown with trees and brush. This is in an area of KS that was traditionally the place to go to hunt quail. Over the years the scrub brush and trees have moved in and the quail have died off.
Click to expand...

how sad my 2 guys I work with from Atchison say the same thing on there grandmas place they used to kill phez like crazy years ago now all there is a covey of birds
 
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