M. R. Byrd
Well-known member
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!
Well I should be able to remember your birthday and KB daughter's birthday, since this is my wedding anniversary.
Where have all the Quail gone? - SE KS
- Thread starter -Wildcat-
- Start date
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!
Well I should be able to remember your birthday and KB daughter's birthday, since this is my wedding anniversary.
M. R. Byrd
Well-known member
Yes it is and yes it does.
jeffstally
Member
Congrats on the baby girl!
kansasbrittany
Banned
Well, we've already highjacked the thread. Today marks 16 years for my wife and I
NO BS!
M. R. Byrd
Well-known member
Well, we've already highjacked the thread. Today marks 16 years for my wife and I
Congratulations on that also, but you are just kids. Ours was the big 4-0.
Were you over NW or on the E part of town?
I used to live at 21st/135th by the new Y and now live at K96/Woodlawn
Id see pheasants along the creek to the N of my parents house when I ran the dog, as there is one old hobby farmer who still does things the old way and isnt anal about farming clean etc, leaves a lot of junk around etc. Great for deer, but he wont let anyone hunt it. A few pheasants would call it home as well. Not sure if they're still there, but I do know one place there are tons of them and its great to run the dog.
As far as Quail - I havent read the whole thread all the way through, but Troy, I remember something you stated that made a lot of sense as well. I like you believe it all boils down to habitat....some will mention that they have great habitat on their place, but if its 10 miles to the next great pocket of habitat thats not really doing the birds any good. Its not like a quail will migrate 10 miles to find more suitable cover.
I believe that you mentioned that we have shrunk the pockets of habitat, whereas back in the day they used to be connected or at least closer together allowing the birds more freedom to roam, travel etc, therefore supporting more birds.
I think I phrased it how you put it.
Definitely a sad state of affairs. Im only 31 and remember hunting near Parsons when I was 14-16 and sporadically thereafter - they were pretty good years at least better than anything Ive seen in my adult life. My dad would go out to the farm when he was in his 20's (woulda been late 70's early 80's) for an annual family quail hunt and apparently what I saw when I was 14-16 was peanuts compared to what he saw when he was younger.
Then again the farmer whos land we would hunt on changed his habitat drastically, woodlands matured, and he bulldozed all the old farmsteads and fence rows so he could maximize his farmland.
Prairie Drifter
Well-known member
It's called habitat isolation. The islands of habitat need to be over 3000 acres in order to be significant. Populations under about 1500 birds may be doomed if a significant mortality event occurs.
KATroutman13
Member
PD,
What is KDWP doing to prevent that habitat isolation? The better question may well be better posed as, what is KDWP doing to reverse that trend?
Wes
What is KDWP doing to prevent that habitat isolation? The better question may well be better posed as, what is KDWP doing to reverse that trend?
Wes
M. R. Byrd
Well-known member
Prairie Drifter can give you better information than I can, but I recall it being said that a quail might only travel a quarter a mile from where thay are hatched.
I also remember reading in a book PD recommended("On Bobwhites", by Fred S. Guthery) that the muscles in the quail's breast prevent them from anything by short flight. Now you take a pheasant that can fly a long ways, then take these lesser prairie chicken that can fly miles at a time.
Joe Kramer helped me start developing habitat at the ranch and he said something to the effect , "Do it for the quail and you will have good pheasant habitat, but the opposite is not true."
Prairie Drifter
Well-known member
There are documented cases of quail travelling over 30 miles. However, if your habitat island is small, the chances of the quail and a prospective mate hitting your 1/360 degree on the compass is remote.
Quail are the modern eample of Bison. We fragmented their native range, to start with, then the remaining birds are subject to overharvest, due to being compressed into a small defined territory, and lack the capacity to repopulate due to the aforementioned lack of habitat and beat down numbers. Looks like quail are the ultimate species which needs ecosystem management. Missouri attempting this with the quail focus areas where they can enlist the interested landowners within an identified area, fairly large in scope which are willing to actively manage for more quail. We will not have "accidental" quail in the future, barring some radical/ fortunate change in farming practices. We might save the species as a huntable gamebird on some scale. But the decline has come real fast! Our reaction thus far is not equal to the task. Everybody uses the DU model, and as laudable as it is, DU had several advantages we do not have with quail. Lots of ducks produced on public ground in both US and Canada, also in remote areas, where land is cheaper historically, and less productive. You can seasonally crowd a mass of waterfowl onto a small highly managed refuge, during migration and wintering. I don't know the numbers, but if it takes an acre to produce and sustain a duck, it takes two to produce sustainable each quail capable of providing some hunting and a rebounding population. As PD stated 3000 acres is about the minimum. Good heaven a 3000 acre waterfowl habitat project would support many thousands of ducks, but in our climate about 1500 quail, and allow a harvest of 500 from hunting or so if conditions were right. If it were easy, everybody would be doing it, as it is it's a labor of love, so it doesn't have to make sense economically or return on investment. I do believe you can make money farming and still have quail, that is the message that we must get out!!!
M. R. Byrd
Well-known member
oldandnew,
Good post.
Prairie Drifter,
I don't have the three thousand acres, but I do have a major habitat project underway that will benefit all wildlife, especially the quail. I just hope my health holds out so it will be reality, not just a dream and it is only Phase I.
Now if I could afford and was offered a long term lease on three thousand acres of prime quail acreage, I would be on that like a duck on a bug.
This thread was about SE Kansas quail. Not sure who has the easier task ahead to establish bountiful number of bobwhites, you guys in SE Kansas or me at Dodge. Bet we know in five years. Good luck.
Good post.
Prairie Drifter,
I don't have the three thousand acres, but I do have a major habitat project underway that will benefit all wildlife, especially the quail. I just hope my health holds out so it will be reality, not just a dream and it is only Phase I.
Now if I could afford and was offered a long term lease on three thousand acres of prime quail acreage, I would be on that like a duck on a bug.
This thread was about SE Kansas quail. Not sure who has the easier task ahead to establish bountiful number of bobwhites, you guys in SE Kansas or me at Dodge. Bet we know in five years. Good luck.
M.R. If you find a lease of three thousand acres of quail ground, or more to lease, I expect you to share! I'll gladly pay my share and smile, that picture you posted X about 200 more just like it will do. I think you have an advantage in the Dodge area because you haven't had the fescue invasion like we have back here. Killing the fescue, and keeping it at bay is about half the battle. If we still had a predominance of warm season grass, or even timothy and orchard, we'd be way ahead.
Start blasting some hawks (I wont turn you into Troy
)Have you considered trying to stock some scaled quail or asking if the state would do it? I wonder if they'd consider stalking some gambels quail. I know of small 160 acre patch out west thats near a game farm where they turn them lose and they have 2 or 3 covies each of gambels and scaled quail where they shouldnt be, that have been around for several years. My buddy mounted a gambles this past fall. Such a pretty bird. I doubt they would, but they are suited for the Dodge City Climate in my opinion.
I think the key for the states western quail is some access to water be it around a sprinkler or irrigation pivot/guzzler and having some grains to sustain them during the winter, ie milo, corn etc. No till farming and limit the use of all the pesticides/herbicides and I think you've got a winning combination. Too many people want to farm so clean. Its not good for the birds. With the high cost of fuel and chemicals, Id think it might be advantageous to limit some of the inputs on the land.
Id think that especially out west where you need to farm on a large scale to make any money, theres a point where the less you work/spray/touch the field the savings in fuel/fertilizer/spray bills would offset any loss of a yield. Saving yourself sometime should be worth something too. But I could be wrong.
I absolutely love it when a farmer/rancher will farm an irrigated section of ground and leave the unirrigated 5-10 acre corners in natural grasses. Its even better if they put cattle for a short while to forage and knock some of the cover down while keeping them out of other smaller pockets of cover. The birds love it (pheasants/quail both) Ive run into the perfect combo on occasion but not very often. When I do I savor it.
As far as CRP is concerned, let some cattle on it or on occasion do some strip discing. I get sick of seeing the endless jungle of grass untouched by anything. The best hunting and populations of birds Ive ever found are not in the super thick crap that the birds cant even run in. The only thing those fields are good for are field mice, deer and for harboring some occasional pockets of pheasants when its very cold. They'd still prefer to run and some of that stuff the mice have a hard time moving through.
M. R. Byrd
Well-known member
That picture is from a place many times bigger than the 3,000 acre minimum. Shoot, I would mortgage my first born to lease it.
Prairie Drifter
Well-known member
Shane, a couple of points. In their range, scaled quail are suffering the same habitat and population problems that the bobwhite are. Stocking them where they aren't currently is just like stocking bobwhite where they can't currently support a population. The limiting factor has to be increased to move the population upward. This leads me to the second point. If we think that cropland will cure the problems we are having with quail, we will never recover. Everyone wants to think adding quail artificially or adding an unnatural food source will fix the problems we are seeing. In general, it comes down to perennial habitat in most cases. There is a shortage of useable space of one kind or another; be that nesting, brood-rearing, escape, thermal, or other types of cover quail depend on. Quail do use crops, but in most of their range they don't depend on it. Plenty of our problems go right back to the bank. If landowners can't make a profit on the ground, it's a problem. All too often, cattlemen "hope" for conditions to improve. While this is going on, the grasses that they are grazing get overgrazed. The further SW you go, the longer it takes for this damage to be overcome. We saw this in the 10 year drought that came here in the 90's. Our neighbors didn't destock during the drought and their pastures haven't recovered today. Some of those pastures you couldn't lose a brown golf ball in using a driver. Others tried to "improve" their grass by killing all the brush as the grass wasn't carrying cattle the way it used to. Some of that is due to the damage they put on it in the drought, some is that they are using the same stocking rate that their grandfather used. Unfortunately, their grandfather's cows weight 400-600 pounds less. That means they have been overgrazing for most of 2-4 generations.
Similar autrocities are occuring on our croplands. By show of hands, who here thinks it's green to burn ethanol in our vehicles? We are using non-renewable inputs like Ogallah Aquifer water, fossil fuels for the equipment, fertilizer made from fossil fuels, and natural soil fertility to grow the corn that they use to make that alcohol. We are burning that in our cars and calling it green. Far from it. When we perfect the chemistry and engineering to make alcohol out of cellulose, then maybe we can be more green. Imaging KDOT never mowing the road ditches again. Contractors would bale the vegetation several times a year and run it through the alcohol plant. The cellulose that normally goes to the landfill would be picked up at your curb and taken to the alcohol plant. If you have unwanted or invasive plants on your place, alcohol. Tree or building damage from a tornado or storm, alcohol. Am I off track yet?????? Haven't even gotten to genetically engineered plants that kill bugs when they get bitten.
Similar autrocities are occuring on our croplands. By show of hands, who here thinks it's green to burn ethanol in our vehicles? We are using non-renewable inputs like Ogallah Aquifer water, fossil fuels for the equipment, fertilizer made from fossil fuels, and natural soil fertility to grow the corn that they use to make that alcohol. We are burning that in our cars and calling it green. Far from it. When we perfect the chemistry and engineering to make alcohol out of cellulose, then maybe we can be more green. Imaging KDOT never mowing the road ditches again. Contractors would bale the vegetation several times a year and run it through the alcohol plant. The cellulose that normally goes to the landfill would be picked up at your curb and taken to the alcohol plant. If you have unwanted or invasive plants on your place, alcohol. Tree or building damage from a tornado or storm, alcohol. Am I off track yet?????? Haven't even gotten to genetically engineered plants that kill bugs when they get bitten.
M. R. Byrd
Well-known member
Drifter, Drifter,
It is pretty late to be getting worked up.
It is pretty late to be getting worked up.
kansasbrittany
Banned
Another awesome post PD. I think that makes close to 673 posts you've made that are worth reading.