Thanks Adam. I had missed that one. I have a hat from Samara Plantation, so i must have hunted there as a guest at some time. I'm a little like Stan in thinking there must be something besides habitat that has caused our quail collapse.
I've talked with Reggie Thaxton about his theory of habitat disintegration. He contends that GA after the Boll Weevil, became one uninterrupted mass of perfect quail habitat from the mountain valleys to the coast.
His contention is that the "Spring Shuffle" where related coveys from the winter break up and the boys and girls go looking for unrelated mates for the next generation is the key problem. When the place where the next covey should be becomes a shopping center, there are no unrelated mates to be found.
Yes there is some problem with that, but in South GA there is still plenty of contiguous wilderness for the next covey to be found. I asked Reggie what i could do with 500 acres of mature planted pine, burned regularly to establish the bird numbers i remember. His answer was to buy 5,000 more contiguous acres. Uhhh, not gonna happen.
Predators, fire ants, parasites or something wiped out our bird numbers across the south. I don't think its just shopping malls...Geo
