Milo and soybeans don't compete for acres milo and corn do or milo and wheat do. Soybeans are the legume that feed grain such as milo and corn are rotated to. They are also double cropped behind wheat in most areas east of the flint hills. In our area milo acres have decreased, but they have been replaced with corn not soybeans. Soybeans pretty much have the same acreage percentage in eastern Kansas that they have since the early 70's. The mid to late 90's that we all agree was the time that quail numbers started to go down hill, also corresponds to when fur prices started to tumble to virtually nil, and predator numbers in quail country exploded. I also think that fescue replacing native in many of the pastures is a big factor. We have raised soybeans on this farm for 60 years its nothing new. If soybeans were the reason for the quail decline it would have happened much earlier.
The quail decline started about 1972 , nobody acknowledged it or talked about it till the 1990's! Prior to that time we had school boy trappers like me, and a lot of farming was done with what we called 4 row equipment because water crossings and fields were small and irregularly shaped. beans sure did replace milo. at least in our little corner. Wheat was left in stubble, fallow rather than double cropped with beans, want to see a lot of quail, doves,mallards, or pheasants, check out a fallow or burn't wheat field. In SE Kans. Milo gave way to wheat to take advantage of the double crop. Though there is no doubt that corn replaced a lot of milo as well,especially since the RR crops. Next year we will have the first RR milo. Might increase the acres planted, but at what cost, in pestiicdes, herbicides, passes over the field. It might be better, or we might from the gamebird perspective ruin the crop. Time will tell. I knew a quail guru in Alabama years ago. He had 1200 acres, hunted everyday, never ran out of birds, or even came close, carried all kinds of varieties of lespedeza, bicolor, bush, annual, kobe. The place was alive with wild quail. Lespedeza provided overhead cover, food, open understory, escape cover. The guy carried seed in his pockets, insisted you do too! Spread by hand all over the place. Virtually no trees, ground produced no income, just quail. Disturbed about one third of the property in patches every year by burning or tilling. None of us can afford to do that, but after years of planting varieties of lespedeza, the Missouri and Kansas Wildlife agencies, now label lespedeza as noxious and undesirable. Add multiflora rose as well, I can't tell you how many years I had a covey of quail, roost under the protection of multiflora, eating the berries, in a safe haven. I realize these plants are a management issue and can be a real pain in the patoot, (that's a scientific term by the way!), but we had quail then, and we don't now. Ragweed, goldenrod, shattercane, all on the hit list, all beneficial and preffered by quail.
