My State has been grappling with the "quail issue" for some time. When I was teaching I had a class partner with the local Conservation Dept. folks to do quail covey counts in a nearby area where landowners had signed on for funding for some quail friendly practices. Our covey counts took place both within the areas where these practices occurred and without. It was stunning to see the difference in the number of coveys. Although not all of the folks who signed on to the funded practices were farmers, I was encouraged that many were. If the farmers care enough and get support to help, maybe there's hope.
This past year a fellow PGCA member invited me to hunt on a farm in a nearby county that had offered a quail hunt as part of a fundraising auction aimed at supporting wounded veterans. Although our hunt happened to fall on a drenchingly (my word) wet day, we saw some of the best North Missouri bird cover I've seen in the past 30 years of hunting. We found birds, and I got invited back by the landowner for another hunt later in the season. Oh my gosh(!) what a difference a shift in practice on a piece of ground can make for wildlife.
It can happen IF we want it to happen.
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"Doubtless the good Lord could have made a better game bird than bobwhite, and better country to hunt him in...but equally doubtless, he never did." -- Guy de la Valdene (from A Handful of Feathers )
"'I promise you,' he said, 'on my word of honor, I won't die on the opening of the bird season.'" -- Robert Ruark (from The Old Man and the Boy)
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