Quote:
Originally Posted by Reggie Bishop
That cover you are shooting in looks very much like Southeast Tennessee cover. The only thing missing here are the little feathered rockets!
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And they are missing on many of the farms we hunt here in Missouri and Iowa, too. The bad weather last February killed lots of breeder birds, and the Spring rains hit some places very hard. The bigger problems are the incentives (and mixed messages) we give farmers (in some cases) to clear cover in the name of production on marginal land. On one hand we have CRP, and then we have programs that provide funding to take out fence rows and "clean up" ditches. It's an odd mix of good and bad (for quail at least) policies. I can't blame farmers for wanting to increase profits.
We went this morning to check on a covey we'd found earlier on a farm where bulldozers were taking cover away. This farm has been our Christmas Day farm, since it's pretty close and we can get to it and back home in time for dinner. When we arrived the bulldozers were gone(!), but the farm had received heavy disking, turning under any residual grain. No covey to be found in the scant cover that was left. The plight of Mr. Bob today. I'm sorry that your covers are barren of quail, Reggie. I know that Tennessee was once a great quail state, and I have hunted grouse there back in the late 1990s. It must be hard to see what has happened in the name of progress. I see it here, too.
But, I keep going, and I cherish every covey we find, and every day we have afield in what I have come to know as home.
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