To those who believe that the hawks are to blame, some is true most is not. Most of us who see hawks soaring around are of the broad winged variety, mostly Red Tailed Hawks in the east and Broad Winged and Red Shouldered hawks in the mid-west. These birds of prey have very little effect on any game birds. Their style is to swoop down onto the ground and kill mostly rodents. The narrow-winged variety, Sharp Shinned, Coopers, do most of their hunting by chasing, are very good at catching songbirds, but too small for gamebirds. Goshawks and the falcons are the ones that will have no problem with gamebirds. The Goshawk prefers woods, and grouse, maneuvers through trees with that great tail of his and can chase them down. The falcons, mainly Perrigrine in the east and Prairre Falcon in the west are the true hunters and a treat to watch them in the quest for food. They say the Perrigrine can dive up to 180 mph. Have special baffels in their nose to breathe.
Lets not leave out the one of the greatest killer of gamebirds the Great Horned Owl, most of the time just takes the head. Loves freshly stocked pheasants.
And the greatest killer of all for quail, the feral cat. People that own them and let them loose should put bells on them.
Also most important is habitat. There has to be wood piles, fence rows, and thick cover for these birds to hide in.
DDT was a problem with hawks, the reason was that the DDT was to kill insects on crops, what eats insects, songbirds, what eats songbirds, some hawks. They found that the DDT injested by eating songbirds caused the egg producing calcium in the marrow of the hawks bones to cause them to have very thin shelled eggs. Almost wiped out the Perrigrine.
Anyway, everyone that is a hunter or a follower of birds of prey should learn more about them, instead of just wanting to get rid of them.
Raccons, foxes, skunks, opossums are more of a threat than all the hawks and owls combined. This is what happens when you ban trapping in states and the price of furs are not worth the effort to trap where you can.
