I guess the best I can say is it depends. Everything is relative, relative to it's management, pressure, potential, status, etc. Any area that received significant pressure will be more likely to suffer from the effects of late season harvest. Areas that might be protected from upland hunting by deer leases or other factors may well be able to sustain some fairly strong pressure late because the carryover to that point. Nothing in nature is an even coat of paint. As you mention, there are areas that are dominated by fringe habitats, maybe better said as marginal habitats where the effects would be magnified. There are other areas where, coming out of the drought, the habitats were improved due to those pressures. Those areas may well be more resilient and will probably even expect additional increase because those improved habitats have not been filled and the predisposition to reproduce strongly in such a circumstance will pull the population that way. We all know that there are some many variables between now and when we would call next year's crop of birds "recruited", that we'll not be writing the season opening predictions just yet.
Shane, to surmise that the wet conditions will automatically lead to overgrown conditions fails to take into account the producers on the land. Unfortunately, many of them are far more optimistic about improving conditions and fail to accept or understand the depth of the damage done by the drought. They will return to or even surpass the grazing pressure on those grasslands prematurely or beyond what the recovery actually is. In the short-term, that may well lead to increased production. However, once some kind of stressor returns to that habitat, it may well crash more quickly and/or deeper than it would have or should have had management been more cautious. I guess the reason there is no perfect recipe for managing these habitats is that you have to be responsive as a land manager to what comes just as you have had to with what has already been. It is often more art than prescription. Putting X pounds of beef on in May and pulling them off in November isn't art, it's bad management. I'm not sure the "average" rules are always in effect during the peak boom or bust years. I'm guessing that, in those years, the effects of many things could well be either buffered or magnified beyond what they would be in a "normal" year. The magnificent recovery of quail in Texas' Rolling Plains is such an example. Despite the problems with eye and cecal worms, the population bounced bigger than expected perhaps because the improvement in the habitat and maybe even the extent of the reproduction season combined to perform that well in spite of the expected health problems. I think we can expect that the same level of overharvest in two different areas may well result in two different results. We, as a species, are more than a bit lazy. We tend to not measure the population before the season and, therefore, tend to not know what we should harvest. If you want to have birds late season to work pups on or to ensure reproduction the following year, harvest lightly! My constituents ideals (not all of them) that, "if I don't kill them, someone else will", consistently leads to a population that is below what the habitat would support. YOU have to have control of every variable in order to ensure you've done everything you can to ensure next year's population. The less control, the more limited the predictions. Not sure I answered any or all of the questions.
