doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Favorite Game/Gun Picture - 2012 Hunting Season

Hello All. This is my first picture post, so bear with me....Here is a shot of a pair of banded woodducks I shot in Vt early in the season. The gun is a Universal Overwing that my father gave me on my 18th birthday (I'm 52 now). The shells were TM #5's. After doubling on banded woodies, I went home so that the Gods of Duck Hunting didn't think I was being greedy.
https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=4973254487932&set=a.3028218583250.2155202.1196390610&type=1&theater

I see that didn't work out. I was trying to copy a pic from my Facebook account to this post. Is that possible? I know how to make it work on other sites, but apparently not here.

Mergus

Mergus,
For photo posting click on this link and follow the directions.
http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=148935#Post148935
Steve

Just curious, where were the woodies banded?

Bird season's still in here in GA. Too bad about all you guys up North! Guns are a 20ga Miroku Daly and a 16ga Sauer my boys were shooting. My Parker's in the truck.

Saturday at the farm with two good dogs (Willy[GWP]on right and Daisy Mae[GSP]on left):



Birds are all released in the picture, but we do still get into a wild covey now and again...Geo

Geo,

Nice pic.

Have you ever considered establishing CP-33 "Bobwhite Buffers" on your row crop fields?

Adam

Good idea Adam, but I have no crop fields. I did enroll the transmission line r/w into GA Power's "Wings Program" which provides a little more habitat than pine mono-cultures.

I started planting pine trees back in the '80s and all of the open land I have left on my farm is what I call a bird-field of about 40 acres which I allow to grow up in grass and weeds, then strip mow for releasing poultry. I do burn the woods which seems to create pretty habitat for birds, but my experience has been that "if you build it, they still don't show up"!

Kick-em-up quail is not wild bird hunting by any means, but at least my dogs get to smell some actual quail which they usually don't when I do my wild bird hunting. I've got old somehow and after sitting behind a desk practicing law for 40 something years, put out birds are more my speed anyhow...Geo

The biggest problem with establishing buffers, burning and doing everything right is that if you don't have control of a large enough block of land you are still mostly wasting your time. I have a 526 acre block that I could be doing more on to create better habitat, but even that is not nearly enough land to effect a real improvement in wild bird numbers. It is hard to look at the bigger picture and admit that even if you do everything perfectly on 1000 acres, and you still are surrounded by pine monoculture, or hardwood infestation, or intense row crop farming, or coastal bermuda fields, you have really not done much at all. Oh, you may see a few coveys return to a 1000 acre block, but not what we would hope for.

It saddens me greatly, but at the advice of one of the best quail biologist in the southeast I have just about given up on the idea of intensively managing my land for quail and expecting significant results. I am next door to one of the most intensively managed plantations in Georgia, Wade Plantation. Everything that was done on that place for 20 years was filtered through the sieve named Will It Be Good For Quail? Numbers increased to the point that there was great hunting there for a few years, but have again crashed! It is some of the most pristine habitat you have ever seen and I am told they now are lucky to find 6-7 coveys in a full days' hunting, and that with several dogs on the ground and two or three men on horses watching the dogs.

The same old 5-6 coveys on our place just hang on, from year to year about the same, just as it has been now the last 25 years. My hats are off to them, too, for they have become true survivors and have adapted to live in a "less than ideal environment".

Pardon my mourning. It is just so, so sad to remember what was, and see what is now.

SRH

I have a sporting magazine published in the early 1950's lamenting the demise of the quail. Here we are 60 years later singing the same old song.
Steve

Steve, in the Southeast, it's fragmentation of habitat and that's only gotten worse and worse here since the '50s. I'm not sure what the problem is in the West, maybe global warming, maybe something else like an intestinal parasite which started in the East and moved West.

When I bird hunted in Tamaulipus State in Northeast Mexico back in the '80s I would kick aside the brown grass in the huge pastures we hunted and find a multitude of dried weed seeds which carry over from year to year in that dry climate. I don't think it's fragmentation of habitat out West. I don't know what it is, but I can verify what Stan said about our quail pulling a disappearing act over the last 30 years...Geo

PS: My solution; poultry!

The quail decline is sad to see. If I had the means, I could quite easily manage my lease for wild quail. It is 800 acres surrounded by several thousand acres of pinewoods that are managed for wild birds (and some early released quail on our southern border). Thousands of acres that look just like this.


But because I lack those funds, I had to form a club. We try to encourage the wild quail and do an early release program to make the hunting as wild as possible. Next best thing I guess.

Adam