Stan I know absolutely that you are right. I managed intensively several medium to large farms to try to bring back high numbers of quail. Perhaps if we could do it on a million acres it might work but 200-1200 acres never worked long term. You get improvement, a boom year or two and then a bust year which birds just never seem to recover from. I did feed a lot of Hawks, foxes, coons, feral cats and other vermin. I got expert advise, good advise and quack advise in my efforts. Some worked and some did not. Without strict preditor control nothing worked well. You can not fool Mother Nature.
The weirdest "method" involved Banty hens as brood mothers for quail hatchlings. The claim was that the mother would protect the quail until they were big enough to fend for their self. What the heck I thought so I tried it. Don't know who got the hen, a fox, coon, hawk or skunk but that lasted about a week and all the hens were dead hatchlings never to be seen again. Still that cost me a couple hundred dollars to fail other plans cost a lot more to fail.
