I saw this on FB. It's not an intensive study, but an interesting tidbit. Seems to be a lots of misconceptions of quail, their mortality and the carryover to next year. While habitat and weather are the largest factors in their mortality, I found this to be interesting also. Especially with the late season tailgate pictures with tons of quail on it.
Interesting Quail Study
- Thread starter V-John
- Start date
Interesting little read. Here's the most relevant quote.
"In fact, researchers in western Oklahoma found that quail alive on February 1st had twice the chance of surviving until April compared to birds alive on November 1st. More specifically, the researchers found a strong survival inflection point in mid-January, indicating that harvesting quail after mid-January is more likely to be additive, decreasing the breeding stock."
That's the research that I'd like to read. I wonder if the study was conducted in an environment without hunting mortality.
"In fact, researchers in western Oklahoma found that quail alive on February 1st had twice the chance of surviving until April compared to birds alive on November 1st. More specifically, the researchers found a strong survival inflection point in mid-January, indicating that harvesting quail after mid-January is more likely to be additive, decreasing the breeding stock."
That's the research that I'd like to read. I wonder if the study was conducted in an environment without hunting mortality.
Agreed. Id like to hear more about the details of the study as well.
To me that's just playing with statistics like the hot button Covid death rates.
No shxt a bird alive in Feb 1st is more likely to make it to April -- that bird alive on Feb 1st only has to live 2 more mos whereas one alive November 1st has to make it 5 mos to get to Apr 1st.
Lointer man
Active member
I would like to dive deeper into the convo, I’m sick and tired of folks saying “where’s the quail?” “ ain’t no birds around like there use to be” I’ve heard everything from more chicken hawks per mile section to turkeys predators
kick them up
Active member
Great topic. Read somewhere that larger hawks aren't speedy enough to catch many quail but the little rockets can and do. NOT discounting avian predation as a factor - owls eat them up bad. First hand observation on that. However studies in VA showed far and away the largest issue (at least in VA) was ground dwelling nest killers - to include racoons, skunks, mice/rats and snakes. Coyotes might make a dent in racoons (worst of the worst) and avian predators prey on mice/rats and sometimes snakes. Hard to discount the argument that, ultimately, good habitat overcomes much - and growing population pressures work against us on that.
Prairie Drifter
Well-known member
A lot of factors figure into this topic. I posted this back in the day. It brings up some of those other considerations.
Quail W-2
Another year has come and gone, 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 is all about the math!
I am sure by now that you are wondering just what I am talking about. It all boils down to bird population math. I drove by a pickup on the area today three 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. 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 does not 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 not have made it to next years' breeding season anyway. Later in the season the math changes. Once that last compensatory bird is harvested, we are 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 are into additive mortality by sometime 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 is 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. However, 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 several groups that do not 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 is not 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. When you add to that the protection we give pheasant hens and their more polygamous nature, pheasants are a much better bird for public land situations.
There are many methods sportsmen use to 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 do not 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 is 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 did not 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.
Quail W-2
Another year has come and gone, 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 is all about the math!
I am sure by now that you are wondering just what I am talking about. It all boils down to bird population math. I drove by a pickup on the area today three 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. 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 does not 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 not have made it to next years' breeding season anyway. Later in the season the math changes. Once that last compensatory bird is harvested, we are 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 are into additive mortality by sometime 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 is 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. However, 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 several groups that do not 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 is not 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. When you add to that the protection we give pheasant hens and their more polygamous nature, pheasants are a much better bird for public land situations.
There are many methods sportsmen use to 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 do not 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 is 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 did not 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.
Excellent, and very actionable, information also available from our neighbors to the east. See www.missouriconservation.org
birddogs4evr
Active member
There seems to be a "hawk" on every fence post , too damn many !
We see the hawks because they are out and about during the daytime but nocturnal ground dwellers and owls do more damage IMHO. Can't do much about them. Feral cats might afford a real opportunity for improvement in many areas though.
Absolutely. At face value, the sentence I quoted reads like the old Dilbert cartoon where the pointy-haired boss sees a problem when he discovers that 40% of vacation and sick days occur on Mondays and Fridays. That's why I'd like to see the study that's referenced. I would hope the actual study has more robust findings.
Makes me wonder. I've seen on FB and other places, so many people are quick to try and kill as many as coyotes as possible. Damage to calves/cattle etc aside, I've heard (I say that as I don't have numbers to back that up) that coyotes can help the quail population as they do kill lots of ground/nest predators like rats, etc. I believe there was a study on that as well, I'd have to look into that.
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Interesting read.
Proving that I am both a native born Kansan and a true Geezer, I remember when the state paid us a "bounty" of $2 per set of coyote ears. That would buy about 6 boxes of .22s, or six gallons of gasoline though. Off point, sorry. More relevant, at least in the "don't believe everything you read" line - for years I read accounts from "experts" stating coyotes won't kill anything but sick or dying deer. Not so. They will actually team up on a healthy adult deer. Seems like the coyotes have some kind of advantage chasing uphill because from what I've seen, that's often where they pull them down. Don't mind what others do or don't do, but I've become almost a fan of coyotes. Gotta love a creature that so values his life and liberty that he'll chew his own foot off to escape a trap. Plus they are pure hell on feral cats.
Same here, to be honest. Coming from a primarily a quail hunter and non farmer, I generally pull for them. UNLESS they start messing with my dogs or getting too close to the dogs. Leave me alone, and I leave them alone. That being said, I can understand farmers dislike for them.
The answer is habitat #1 - mother nature #2 -- Look at all the places east of KS that used to have quail - they don't anymore due to habitat reasons primarily. KS quail pops have bounced back (probably due to the drought of 2011-2012 thinning out the matted warm season grasses that weren't managed) - but for the most part the SE part of the state is an exception and I'd say large swaths of the NE - both are turning into forests and steadily cool season and other invasive grasses are taking over what used to be prairie. Cool Season grasses and good upland habitat never went together, much less cool season grasses and good habitat do not go together.
I found most of my coveys this year in timber. I'd have to sit and think about it, but looking at the 30 or 40 coveys we found, I'm guessing most of them (say, 20-30 were either in, or next to timber). Which, would make sense and align with some of what Husker is talking about.
Habitat seems to be the consensus answer as to the number one problem - but I'm not so sure that the primary reasons for habitat degradation and loss are necessarily less management (usually burning for grass). There seems to be plenty of that, e.g., throughout the Flint Hills. I do know that when I first started spending time in Virginia I got some reasonable (worth going out, sans dog) quail hunts in. Things got steadily worse and I participated in various efforts to improve it (including annual counts that become too disappointing to continue). At least in that area - habitat was the insurmountable issue, and that was driven by burgeoning population growth. Both directly through suburban and exurban growth, and indirectly as in the case on Quantico where housing developments around the perimeter drove (successful) citizen complaints that greatly reduced heavy live fire exercises. That reduced wild fires - which seriously degraded the habitat suitability for quail. Not to mention, not so many quail in the newly exurban back yards.
Prairie Drifter
Well-known member
All fires are not created equal. The fires in the flint hills have long ago turned from good to bad. Since they started using early intensive grazing where they burn every year and double stock for the first half of the season, quail populations have tailed off. Quail need cover to both nest in and escape predators in. With no cover left over hundreds of thousands of acres, depredation is greatly increased and nesting success is greatly decreased. Further, many of their burns are late in the season, multiplying the problem. SE Kansas went from tall-grass native prairie in the first half of the 1900's to fescue predominantly in the last half. Forestation increased some 30% or more in that part of the state since the '80's. Add in changing ag practices, less dependence on wood for cooking and heat, and any number of variables ( urbanization, neonicotinoids, roundup everything) and it gets us to where we are today.
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