tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7248423708097561253.post2030030354875110660..comments2023-11-05T04:59:20.428-06:00Comments on Bitmap's Miscellaneous: The Things You SeeBitmaphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08545664971977374552noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7248423708097561253.post-67693882282310209782010-11-17T07:02:15.492-06:002010-11-17T07:02:15.492-06:00I don't buy into the theory that fire ants hav...I don't buy into the theory that fire ants have anything significant to do with dropping quail numbers. We don't have fire ants and the quail numbers have been low for years. Some years we don't see any. That same fire ant theory is popular for horned toads as well, but again, we haven't had any horned toads for many years.<br /><br />Changing agriculture methods seem a more likely explanation. That seems to be the case at the farm. Twenty years ago there were plenty of people living in the area. Everyone had their cultivated land and some grazed pasture and there was CRP land. Quail like the grazed pasture with scattered trees and will run into the cultivated land or CRP when threatened. Quail don't seem to like solid CRP or heavily overgrown areas. They seem to like low cover with scattered large cover. For most of the last decade or so it has been almost all cultivated or CRP with little grazing at least right around us. Lately there have been more people coming back in planting what used to be cultivated fields with mixtures of special kinds of grass to give cattle year round grazing. I think that has helped some because the quail like the low cover and eat the seed.<br /><br />We used to have blues and bobwhites out there but nobody has seen a blue quail in years. My grandpa used to not like blue quail because they usually ran before you could get into shotgun range. Usually we only got them when they were hiding under a bush or tree by the driveway or when we were pulling into a farm. Being on private land we would shoot them out the window of the car, sometimes with a .22.<br /><br />Hopefully we'll have enough quail to hunt again one of these days.Bitmaphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08545664971977374552noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7248423708097561253.post-58365944624994594142010-11-17T05:46:47.686-06:002010-11-17T05:46:47.686-06:00Great pictures!
I miss quail. We used to have th...Great pictures! <br /><br />I miss quail. We used to have them around here when I was a boy. I liked the bobwhite song, and hunted them often in the fall. Danged fireants, and "clean field" farming pretty much did away with them close to home.Paladinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03516484024226270103noreply@blogger.com