Midwest Quail

Missouri has some public land with decent bird numbers. I hunt mostly in NW, where the best opportunity for a mixed bag with some pheasants exists in MO, and I hunt mostly on private ground, but if I was coming from Illinois and had a pointer, I might focus more on the NE portion of the state for quail. Because southeast Iowa is better for pheasant than SW Iowa, you’d think NE MO would have more pheasants, but I don’t think that’s really the case. And I think there’s pretty comparably quail numbers across the entire northern tier of the state.

Caveat emptor: I have no hunting experience in Northeast MO. I’m just speculating and repeating what I’ve consistently heard.
 
I've been deer hunting a lot lately on our family farm in southeast Kansas. I have seen and heard quail every day, and have gotten up a couple coveys with over 30 birds in them. Several with 20-25, and a lot of them are this years birds.

The season is open now, and from all I've heard the quail hunting has been great so far. I'm fixing to head out to western Kansas after pheasants next weekend in NWK. I hope to put some quail in the bag too.
 
NW/NC Kansas has the best quail population in years. Lots of theories why but it is true. We moved 10 coveys on 240 acres in one day. Two days later, 6 coveys were moved on a 160 right next to that. That isn't King Ranch numbers but is darn good for Kansas.
 
The state puts out a report every year with the number of hunters and harvest, 30 years ago there were >120,000 hunters vs. 62,000 last year, but the average days afield was more then too. Kansas was still harvesting over 1 million birds at the turn of the millennium. Doing some math at 1.68 birds/day harvested in 2016 and using hunter #'s and days afield from 1986.

(128,200 hunters *6.67 days/hunter)*1.68 birds/day = 1,436,558 quail, if we had the more dedicated hunters of yesteryear. That's 3 times what the realized harvest was.

http://ksoutdoors.com/Services/Research-Publications/Wildlife-Research-Surveys/Small-Game-Surveys
 
I think that there is some underlying causes to the "dedication" part of this equation that doesn't have anything to do with dedication. I think access is part of the problem via leasing due to the deer craze. I know my private access is a fraction of what it was in 2000 and it had definitely affected how much I am in the field. It has little to do with dedication, it has to do with cost, success, crowding, distance, and many other factors. If we could revert today's hunters into the conditions they had in 2000, I think that the numbers would be a lot closer.
 
My son and I are heading to Kansas mid-November to hunt quail with our shorthair.
We live in Illinois. We are willing to pay to hunt some good private land, but have been
told no need to go that route in Kansas. What do you say?
Any specific area you can suggest? Thanks, Steve
 
Doubles said:
I'm your huckleberry.
LOL
Just moved to Grove, OK from New Ham
pshire and have a Llewellin setter and we both need help figuring out the bird game out here.
PM me if ya like.
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I don't know how I missed this!! Just today was searching around the website and happened across it. Maybe we can go find some quail this year.
 
Off topic but I have a question, do California quail sleep on a tree or on the ground?
Bobwhites sleep on the ground, am I correct?
 
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