O Quail, Where Art Thou?
Two birds may be a good day for hunters this quail season in western Oklahoma.
Quail season opens Nov. 10 in Oklahoma but once again, hunters likely will have a hard time finding birds.
“I don’t anticipate the season being much better than last year,” said James Dietsch, founding chairman of the Central Oklahoma 89er chapter of Quail Forever. “I don’t think we made much headway (in the quail population) because of the drought and the heat.”
Dietsch said the quail numbers will not rise until the nesting and reproductive conditions improve for the birds.
Dietsch and other members of the Quail Forever chapter assisted the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation and researchers from Oklahoma State University in a post-reproduction quail survey on the Packsaddle and Beaver wildlife management areas in September.
A dog handler, one bird dog and a researcher were dispersed over one mile routes on the wildlife management areas.
“We ran 37 routes (19 at Packsaddle and 18 at Beaver) and detected eight groups of quail for an average of one group per four miles,” Dietsch said. “That translates to a detection about every 2½ hours.”
The average number of birds per group was eight or nine, he said.
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The decline of quail is due to drought, changes in land use, clean farming and ranching (too much spraying for weeds and brush that benefit quail), overgrazing by bad cattle managers, and the conversion to small crop fields to Bermudagrass and Fescue (so cattle people can abuse their pastures more easily). We are not burning rangeland like we should and cedars and brush are taking it over as well. Vegetation is too thick in many areas due to fire being taken out of the system.
The 60′s, 70′s and 80′s were wet overall. Not the case since the late 90′s until now. Just a few wet years and the rest were very dry. The past two were devastating and we are still in a extreme to exceptional drought over much of the quail’s range.
I think it is funny “seasoned” hunters talk about “chicken hawks killin’ the quail”. Chicken hawks were killing quail in the 60′s 70′s and 80′s just like they are today. We also had bobcats, coons, and everything else people blame for the “reason” quail are going away.
Habitat, Habitat, Habitat, and DROUGHT.
We get some wet years and people start becoming better range managers, you will see the quail numbers surge back. They are just like rats, mice and other small animals; they have high reproductive capacity and can explode back onto the scene on a good, wet, mild year when its not 110 for 4 months.