doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Quail hunting suggestions. Where??

Geo, I've had some cold days early to mid March over this side of the state. You might be right about the birds....

Gil

I was told by an older gentleman nick name of Peanut that has lived and breathed quail and bird dogs his entire life that a pen raised quail can not survive in the wild because they aren't raised on insects...he claimed that pen raised quail don't have enough oil in their tail gland to keep their feathers conditioned and he speculated that it was because of a lack of something they get from eating insects.

I said buy them some crickets Peanut.

He's wrong, jOe. I could prove it to anyone who was here where I could actually show them.

I have a friend who has made a living for the past 25 years or so in helping clients establish a population of released birds that can "make it on their own". He has videos of released birds that come back to the Covey Base Camp with chicks they have hatched .......hens that he can positively identify as having been released in prior years.

https://www.qualitywildlife.com

I've hunted land that he manages for the owner(s), and it is amazing. It works. Owner is Jim Evans, a very knowledgeable game biologist.

There are still people who don't believe man set foot on the moon, too.

SRH

I don't doubt he has videos....making a living he'd have to have him some videOs

Sure they will survive a while but they won't thrive.

"Made a living"...that supposed to pack some weight.

Peanut and his bird dogs have a "made a life".

Most game bilogists lack one thing...common sense.

"Covey base camp"...tell the truth Stan ain't that some silly sounding chit.

We're looking for long term survival...not survival long enough for your illustrious biologist to make a living.

Truth is you or your biologist couldn't prove anything...because we don't have any wild quail in the south except in isolated spots.

That's a fact.

Stan heres an example....
Charles Lindsey a man we both knew...

You think you could ever prove Mr.Charlie wrong on something he told you about a gun ?

Proving Peanut wrong would be just as hard a challenge.

Why...because when it comes to quail any answer is just speculation no one knows the real answer.

Not long-term survival, no. Released birds that acclimate and survive the next summer to raise young are just as susceptible to whatever caused the bobwhite quail decline in the first place. Long term survival is not possible until someone figures out what caused the population crash in the first place. When I said "make it on their own" I did not mean re-establishing a totally thriving population that needs no assistance. I meant that a large number of them survive over a year and raise young, which the rest of the game biologist adamantly argued with Jim that they would not do. But, they do. I can take you on another of my friend's land, who releases every August, any early morning during the spring and summer. We can stop the truck and step out, and we will hear a chorus of quail calling to each other in the early morning. Dozens at once. We see little ones scurrying across the lanes behind Mama all summer. Those birds have too be survivors from previous releases because there were no birds on the place when he bought it 12-14 years ago.

Jim is not one of those biologists with his head stuck in the books. He's as fine a woodsman as I've ever known. He was a demolition expert in the Army, and does beaver control work utilizing his skills with DetaGel. You really don't do yourself any favors when you lump all game biologists into one category. You did say almost, and I know for myself that Jim has got plenty common sense. After having been a friend of his for some 25 years I can tell you that if society ever goes to ----, he's one that I'd welcome in my camp.

I've once again allowed myself to help take a thread too far OT. I'm done with this rabbit chase, Frank. Have a good day.

SRH

They no longer do the unguided thing. (I also did that in the past with some friends.) They own or lease a lot of land, much of which is several miles away from the lodge. Concerns with liability, hunters straying off Wild Wing property, etc.

With released birds, if you're doing high volume, you're going to end up with a mix of early released birds (as Stan described) along with birds that haven't been out for all that long. Our first contact was with a very large covey that flushed and flew like wild birds, some distance from us. We moved other smaller bunches and quite a few scattered singles. There was a cold front moving in that afternoon, and there were birds that appeared to be scattered out and feeding in strips of milo. Plenty of good cover and food available for the birds.

Stan, that sounds about right to me. A couple of my business partners and I leased Tallokas Plantation in Brooks County,GA for a few years back in the '70's. Perfect plantation style cover.

We released sixteen week old birds in 25bird coveys in August every year. We made a point of not shooting them down, relying on wild birds instead. Whether we overshot the released birds or not they were pretty much gone by the end of February.

I think that was natural mortality rather than shooting. We decided the early released bird practice wasn't worth the cost, but that's just my (limited) experience...Geo

The birds are still there, Geo. The previous hunt was a really good one. I will be going with him again soon ............. maybe next week. We typically can find 7-8 coveys in an afternoon, in February. Four legged predator control efforts help him some, too.

That 5 covey day was really way below his usual hunt.

Check your p.m. function.

SRH

In the discussion of survival of released birds, no one mentioned "clipping" the birds beaks. Birds that have had their beaks "clipped" to lessen "losses" in the pens are almost assured to not survive in the wild without feed. This is why preserves that release birds with clipped beaks often use "call pens" to recover surviving released birds. Birds that have not had their beaks clipped have a much better chance of long time survival, similar to wild birds. One pair from a wild covey used to be a common survival rate for wild birds, anyway.
Mike