Ted I have a different model of bobwhite replenishment.
And as a young man I twice hunted coveys to extinction, shooting the last birds when I knew they were the last birds. I had hunted those coveys for years. Knew their habits. I assumed when I shot the last ones that they would come back. They didn't return in the six years before I lost the lease. If I only hunted my leases only five or six days per season then my impact would be negligible. But I hunt them much more often that. Several times I have seen hawks successfully or unsuccessfully prey on bobwhite.
In my experience, mostly in ranchland, bobwhite coveys are like tribes. They have a territory, they have rally points they go to, they go to one area of their territory during a rainy time, another during a drought. They interchange members with other abutting coveys I understand as they have been tracked with radio collars. My birds are flying low this season. I assume that is in reaction to raptor predation. I hunted bobs in the Abilene area last week and they tended to fly much higher than the birds on my lease. Only saw one Cooper hawk while I was in the Abilene area. Saw two yesterday afternoon on my lease.
Since it is my practice to just take two birds per covey on that hunt when I take them with one shot then there is less dog work. Obviously I am not subsistence hunting but hunting for the joy of it. I view it as a waste of a bird when I kill two with one shot.
I am looking for ideas on limiting collateral damage based on the belief (maybe incorrect) that the number of birds I kill out of a covey has an effect on the population and survivability of that covey.
Will you be hunting this lease 6 years from now? How 'bout 60 years from now? 6000 years from now? 60,000 years from now? Try to wrap your head around this-there were bobwhite quail in that area, 60,000 years ago. And a few of those coveys went extinct back then, with no help from you, or, Joe.
Funny thing about men, they think that their impact on the natural world and the order of things in it is significant over the course of their individual lifetimes. And, I'm pretty sure it just isn't so.
You have taken steps to avoid wanton slaughter of what remains of the quail population. Good on you. It is a noble effort, but, the 90 percent figure I threw up earlier is a cold, hard, and well researched fact.
I won't argue that you may be hunting a lease too hard-only you can determine that. But, if conditions are right (and, I suspect, that in the area you are hunting, for a variety of reasons, they are not) birds will move back into an area they formerly did, but, no longer use.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Best,
Ted
