Where have all the Quail gone? - SE KS

-Wildcat-

Super Moderator
Seriously, what's the deal with the quail. :confused:

I hunted several pristine CRP fields this morning with a buddy and our three shorthairs. None of these fields have even been walked this year. We should have at least bumped one covey, but alas - we ended up leaving the fields without seeing a single bird. :(

I'm far from being a biologist, but I think the super wet Spring they've had the past few years down that way have really done a number on the quail. Ideas?

I hope they come back, because I love to eat those tasty little birds! :thumbsup:
 
One thing is for sure, it was not me who put a hurtin on the quail population this year; missed every shot I had.
OK, more seriously (but I did miss all my opportunities to connect with Mr. Bob White), we hunt in the north by north east central area of Kansas every year and we have noticed a decline of the pheasant population in the last two years. The farmer who's land we hunt has had quite wet springs these past two years but missed the hail storms. The wet spring has been quite good for the wheat but I now believe that the overly wet springs have had a major roll in the pheasant population. The quail have been somewhat steady for the past two years but not "bumper crops". I too am not a biologist but from what I read too much moisture in spring does cause complication with the pheasant hatch and it would make sense that it may effect the quail too. As a note the area we hunt did not have the 3-4 weeks of heavy snow on the ground so we can rule that out.
I hope for everyone that prowls on this board that Kansas has all the favorable weather conditions this next year to help support the wildlife populations.
 
I hunt both Kansas and Missouri for 35 years, I hunt places which have not substanscially changed in all that time, or the management has been actually more beneficial for quail deliberately. The decline continues. I ask the question about spring weather, which here and NW Mo., Ne Kans, has been cold and exceptionally wet, with cold drenching rains from March through June. MDC is in the process of a study, which seems to bear out that the spring weatheris currently a bigger suppression on the quail and pheasant population than habitat. Though I'm sure habitat will become the dominant issue if and when we ever get decent spring weather. Snow pack for 15+ days per winter doesn't help either. Meanwhile we can save all the habitat we want, but until we get a weather break, it will sit empty to a large degree. I have suspected this for some time. Such is the circumstance, for quail, this is the dust bowl event of the 30's. And for a variety of the nations bobwhite belt, Kansas is the highlight! I still hate fescue!
 
There are some new requirements for CRP which should help quail, in particular. The old standard thick/tall grass mixes are something of a monoculture. Pheasants use this habitat effectively on a seasonal basis but both pheasants and quail will be better served with the addition of a new mix of leafy weeds. Grass does not support insect colonization to the same extent as broadleaf weeds and chicks of both species must have insects available for calcium = bone development. Quail require a lower height of cover with a preference for interspersed woody vegetation. Ironically, the new mixture requirements would have essentially put the landowners in violation under the old CRP contacts.

Some discing of the grass has already occurred on already established stands of CRP in an attempt to alter the variety/mix of vegetation. Having walked several of these disced tracts during the past season, I can report that hunting these fields can be an ankle breaker.

ratt
 
My guess, and it is only a guess, is too many solid stands of tall grass, especially fescue, too little broadleafs(annual weeds, forbs, legumes), too many soybeans, too little milo and grain sorghums, too much spring moisture. Just a long distance guess.
 
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I omitted Southeast Kansas in my comments, Maybe the saddest of all. Weather is #1, years of drenching spring floods, a lot of that ground is low holds standing water in nesting areas. 2 Habitat change, used to be when I was a kid, the strip pits were young successional stage growth, lots of prairie grass, plum brush pioneering, multiflora rose. Now grown up in a forest. CRP helped for a couple of years, at the beginning, but quail want ground disturbed, CRP matured doesn't offer much, particularly when in Brome, and fesuce which the original CRP outrageously allowed! I used to be able to leave the kitchen of my family farm in Greenbush, Crawford Co. walk a 160@ either side of the road, and never be out of contact with birds. Now I have a better chance of shooting 8 deer, or 8 turkeys, or some combination of the two, on the same hike. We burn, we disc, we have warm season grass with legumes and great diversity. I even see prairie chickens occasionally. We don't have but token quail. Far fewer than when my granddad, ran cattle, and sheep in the woodlots, and farmed the CRP. My dogs regard these hikes as a lark, with no real expectation of birdwork. M.R. Byrd, and others may be on to something with the soybeans, used to be I'd kill birds stuffed with soybeans, now I never even find birds around soybeans, still stuffed with corn and milo though! Nothing more vacant than a big picked winter bean field! Beans over $14.00 the other day, guess there won't be any reduced planting at those prices!
 
I doubt the theory of a wet spring season. SEK has always had a lot of rain. Nothing has changed there in the last 50 years. Yet we have had a serious decline since the 80's. 1988-1990 were the last good years. I remember my female setter "Crip" pointing 9 covies one day in 88'. Loss of habitat has been the biggest blow. Hedge rows removed and too much fescue. Double cropping has hurt as well. Harvesting one week and planting the next just doesn't work. I am sure pesticides use has grown since the glory days.
 
oldandnew,

Ah, Greenbush. Used to travel Hwy 57 on our trips from our then home in Frontenac, back to our parents in Dodge and Ness City. Even though short lived, we enjoyed our time in SE Kansas.
 
Here is a quote from Prairie Drifter on another post-

(QUOTE)Myron,there are several documented problems with soybeans. First, there is a protein in soybeans that prevents quail from digesting their food. Dr. Robel fed pen raised quail a diet of soybeans with no other stress or needs and they all died. Also, soybeans exposed to the weather often develop a fungus that produces the T2 toxin that actually will kill quail. If you add in the lack of cover found in bean fields and the insecticides both applied and systemic that decimate the insect populations and I think anyone can do the math to see that soybeans add up to real problems for quail. Some staticians have graphed the increase in soybean acres against the decline in quail numbers and they are a good match in an inversely proportional relationship. Oooooo, big words for an old bird dogger.(QUOTE)

I was first alerted to the soybean issue when my good friend in Elk County told be about an article in the Wichita Eagle. He had not correlated the connection until that article, but after he read it, he said it was the case on his ranch that as milo began to be replaced by soybeans and finally soybeans became the main crop the quail numbers kept going down to now pretty much zero.

I was thinking that one of the reports on soybeans and quail had something to do with sterility issues when soybeans were a main part of the quail's diet. Maybe someone here knows if that is the case.

Soybeans were my favorite crop until that article changed things for me and I have not planted beans since. This year to work on some weed problems, it is being recommended that I rotate into beans. I know that makes sense for the farm operation, but I just don't know. I am betting that this won't be my year to make the cover of 'Successful Farming'.:eek::(
 
M.R. Byrd, One side of my family lived in Frontenac! I spent every summer of the 60's there and all major holidays, A cousin still lives in the house. My aunts where school teachers, one a principal at Frontenac High till retirement. Everybody shopped at Paluca's supermarket, did the social drinking at the Blue Goose, went out on the town to The Idle Hour, my favorite was the trip to Pittsburg for Pico ice cream, or fresh bread from the frontenac bakery! Small world.
 
Yes, the fresh bread at Frontenac Bakery. He was closed on Tuesdays and Saturday(maybe), his fishing days as I recall. After church on Sunday, I would many times swing by there and he would pull a fresh loaf of Italian hard crust out of the brick oven. Oh so good.

We lived on Willard Street, if you know where that is.
 
Of course, Chicken Annies, Jack's Steak House/Tower Ballroom, Jim's Steak House, Otto's.

Best onion rings in the country!
 
I love pheasant hunting and living out west, but as I get older, I am thinking about heading home. I grew up 15 minutes from Pittsburg. Played baseball at Cherokee, graduated from PSU, and fished every strip pit there was. I still spend several weeks in Scammon every summer fishing and going to Pittsburg for food. My son is a junior and will be heading to PSU after his senior year. Guess I will have to go back to looking forward to those 2 weekends a year where I drive out here pheasant hunting.
 
If we were going to Joplin, we would stop by the Spring River Inn in Riverton.
 
Fishing the strip pits? We got more than we bargained for at Crawford County #2(I believe it was called #2, the one southwest of town). Not a story for the internet, but a good campfire story.
 
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