Home Forums Birds & Dogs Upland Game Some Bobwhite Quail

I don't hunt quail but its still nice to see them. In eastern NC today.

Indeed. Thanks. Got a buddy in Maiden. How far are you from there?

I actually live in southeast Virginia. I'm down in NC several times a month.

Great to see.

A rare sight indeed. Wonderful.

Extremely rare, as in non- existent, in my part of N.C. these days. 30 years ago, could find 6 to 8 coveys a day, haven't heard a Bob whistle in the spring in years. I miss them.

Miss hunting/seeing quail in Nebraska.

Looking forward to the season opening on Saturday.
I took my dogs out yesterday for a bit of training and found 5 coveys. I have not been out before then to get feel for how the summer hatch went, but yesterday was encouraging.

I live in the mountains of WNC. Been a long time since I have seen or heard a quail or a grouse. I wish the wildlife commission would put some energy towards them.

I am told that grouse are extremely difficult to impossible to successfully stock. Quail are perhaps more successfully stocked, but struggle with current predator populations. A common sense bounty on hawks would likely help a bit. Urbanites will never stand for that, though.

Relocating wild quail can have excellent results if the property they're going to has been properly managed for all of the needs that quail have, particularly nesting habitat, brood habitat, and escape cover, all on a large enough tract for the project to work. The few sources for such quail (primarily Tall Timbers) have extremely high standards to qualify for bird relocation.

Released birds are typically for a hunt done on the same day, if not an hour or two before the hunters arrive. These birds are all pen raised and have no survival or reproductive skills. They're typically bigger, and always slower than wild birds, making them exceedingly vulnerable to predation, which happens soon after the hunters leave. Hunting them is a lot of fun, however, and commercial quail hunting is now the primary way that most quail hunters still get to enjoy the sport. That said, it's a completely different challenge and experience than hunting the real thing.

Had about 20 walk out into a foodplot I planted a couple years back, cool thing about it my son, who 10ish at the time got to see them. Probably the only ones he will ever see in the wild down here and he'll probably never see them again.

I have a buddy he claims to have 20/20 vision sit in that same stand maybe a year before and after the hunt said "I've never seen that many chipmunks together in my life!" I still give him heck about that.

Here's a nice property managed for Bobwhites. A place to stay too.
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/l.../t-boone-pickens-mesa-vista-ranch-house/

I'm going down to NC on December 7 for one of those preserve Bobwhite hunts. A friend of mine is treating me. I've never done that before. He's done it a bunch and gets a lot of birds. It's a pay-per-bird hunt. Hope I have a little fun. But they are captive raised birds. I had to get a specific Preserve Hunting license. We're hunting or, more accurately, shooting-at chukars, too.

Growing up, I loved quail hunting more than anything.
Had permission to hunt a tree nursery within walking distance of home. And there were hedgerows to hunt on the walk there. Paradise lost.

Shot my last wild quail in the mid-90's, after nearly 30 years of it. The last season or two of my GSP's life, they were becoming scarce. Since then, I've seen nothing that would make me think another dog would be useful. They are still around, but so scattered that it would require almost unlimited access to land to make hunting them feasible. No other type of hunting has ever really taken its place in my heart.

The biggest problem in my part of NC are the clean farming practices. Right now, 95%of the crops are in and all of the fields are clean as a whistle to the tree line. If they could just leave one harrow width of grain around the fields, for food and cover...that would be a huge step forward. Very little prescribed burning takes place anymore. Lepedezza Bicolor and Partridge Pea used to be planted on back roads. A few simple steps would help. Currently, the few birds we are getting are Coyote bait.

The loss of quail is largely a habitat issue. There's nothing wrong with most any area of the bird's past home range that would prevent their propagation if the landowners were willing to forego maximizing economic incentives and direct the land management towards a new objective. Of course the heavily fragmented nature of land ownership is also an issue as you simply can't achieve the necessary goals of quail management on smaller tracts.
Pine timber, shopping centers, row crop farming, neighborhoods, and the Smokey Bear syndrome all are largely antithesis of the proven and widely known recipe for having and enjoying wild bobwhites. Quail are currently flourishing in areas that management for them, but for the overwhelming portion of their once large range, the choices and priorities that landowners and government agencies have made created the frustration and circumstances that many now experience.
All that said, other options are still out there that can create abundant bird numbers. We just need more people willing to sacrifice a few dollars, something that's more easily said than done, in order to achieve it.

Never in my life has there been any prescribed burning of any significance. It's beneficial without a doubt, but we used to have birds without it. Clean farming is definitely part of it, and I think the nesting phase in particular is where birds are not finding suitable habitat. Very few successful broods are being hatched.

We are very lucky to be covered up with wild Quail, here in S. Texas wild Quail are a whole different hunt than pen raised Quail. Rio7