December 2004 Archives

"And what is a weed but a plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Walk into nearly any County Agent's office and you may see a poster on their wall depicting the "Common Weeds in Texas Pastures." At times I'm tempted to take some correction fluid and change the title to "Key Food Plants for Quail." "Weed" doesn't have to be a four-letter word.

If you're a cotton farmer, plants like johnsongrass and pigweed (carelessweed) probably don't engender much admiration. If you're a rancher, plants like buffalobur, broomweed, and western ragweed don't pay the bills. But if you're a bobwhite, these plants (and other unmentionables) are on your Top 10 list on the buffet.

First, do no harm.

The same oath subscribed to by medical doctors should shape our prescriptions for managing quail habitat. Think critically about your thoughts, goals, and actions for improving quail habitat on your property.

As you read the following, ask yourself if the proposed activities work more to the good of quail, or to the good of the quail's various complement of enemies. Caveat emptor: I'll admit that much of the following reeks of speculation on my part, and is therefore certainly arguable. Consider them food for thought.

Seems this may be a hard candy Christmas for some quail hunters. While most of us are caught up in a quail of plenty, I continue to hear laments from some veteran quail hunters. The area in questions tends to be from Coleman County on northward to Shackelford County. Stephens and Callahan counties may be the epicenter.

If you hunt in those areas, please update me with your quail hunting. And by all means, if you see weak, dead, or apparently diseased quail, let me know immediately; try me on my cell phone at 325-650-0311.

All seems to be well on the western front, and I hope it stays that way!

Why would anyone want to manage for blue quail if they have bobwhites? Blue quail don't endear themselves to classical quail hunting, i.e., behind pointing dogs. But as a student of blue quail for the past 35 years, I appreciate them. When I say "appreciate" the implication is not only that I "value or admire them highly", but also that I "judge with heightened awareness" and “be cautiously or sensitively aware of” their sporting qualities.

Blue quail were a good third of my memories of hunting quail in my teenaged haunts in southwestern Oklahoma during the 1970s. During the dry years, blues would make up 75% of the quail we shot, during "boom" years, perhaps 30%. Accordingly, I submit there are at least 3 reasons to consider blue quail in your management plans. These include (a) they provide a measure of "drought insurance", (b) they offer a variety of hunting situations, and (c) perhaps you just have an affinity for blue quail, as I do.

"Grass is the forgiveness of nature, her constant benediction." - J. J. Ingalls

Over the next week or so, many Texas ranchers are going to ask "where did all that beautiful green forage disappear to?" The verdant, luxuriant growth of filaree, little barley, rescuegrass, and other winter annuals, that looked so good two months ago, is now revealing its cost. And as the winter weeds melt, many will pine George Jones' lyrics "who's going to fill their shoes?"

As it goes for cattle forage, so it is also for suitable grasses for quail nests. If a quail has it's "druthers", it would "druther" nest in a bunchgrass about the diameter of a basketball and about thigh high. But it prefers to nest in residual growth from last year. Therein spells trouble as most of last year's ranges went into a deficit spending mode last summer, thanks to the drought, desert termites, and too many stock for the depleted conditions.

Here's my suggestions for the top quail grasses in Texas. First from the nesting perspective, and then from the seed-bearing perspective. The two lists are pretty much mutually exclusive.

Along with the observation that this has been an outstanding quail season in the Rolling Plains of Texas has been the consensus that there is an abundance of hawks. And hawks are often targets of scrutiny by those who think highly of quail. I use the term "targets" figuratively, as all hawks are protected by state and federal law, and I suspect the fine for shooting one would exceed $500.

At the Bobwhite Brigade, we play a game called "Run for Your Life." The quail (cadets) are forced to seek food and shelter while exposed to two kinds of raptors (birds of prey). The "quail" are vulnerable to aerial predators unless they can find residence in a "quail house"; a hula hoop in our game, a lotebush on the back forty. As the game progresses, the cadets learn that not all hawks were created equally relative to their abilities as predators of quail.

Last August, I made the trip from San Angelo to Lubbock to deliver my daughter Krissa to begin her odyssey at Texas Tech University. Big Spring is about the halfway point, but the world isn't bilaterally symmetrical around Interstate 20. Between there and San Angelo, the world is basically rangeland, above that demarcation it's basically cotton. If your world revolves around quail like mine does, you can find similarities between quail and anything. Let's pull some bolls.

Cotton is king in Texas. The bobwhite is the prince of gamebirds. So what do these "crops" have in common besides royal bloodlines?

Anonymous wisdom espouses that "experience is the strictest teacher; she gives the test first, and the lesson afterwards." I like tests. I use them in practically every program I conduct. At the very least, a good quiz can set the stage for a good educational outing by revealing what one doesn't already know. An humbled student is a more attentive student.

This past week, a Blue Quail Appreciation Day was held at the Elephant Mountain Wildlife Management Area south of Alpine. As the test instrument used at QUADs was weighted heavily towards bobwhites, I revised it to address questions more pertinent west of the Pecos. See how you would have rated. Answers are at the end of the quiz.

It's generically referred to as a "blob", but relax, they're not the protoplasm pseudopod that engulfed everything in its path and mortified you as a teenager in the early 1960s at the La Vista Theatre. This blob is a cross between a blue quail and a bobwhite. And yes it is genuine, unlike the taxidermy-conceived jackalope.

Blobs are quite rare, but if you've been raised in areas where bobwhites and blues are "sympatric", i.e., their ranges overlap, chances are you know of someone who has shot one, or at least have heard of one. As a research associate for the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Center, Tom Shupe trapped a number of blobs on a ranch in Zapata County. About 1 in 1,000 bobwhites shot on the ranch was a blob. Subsequent trapping and banding on the ranch indicated a hybridization rate as high as 70 per 1,000 bobwhites.

I hate to see folks go quail hunting with those $3.99 "dove and quail" loads; to me they're notorious bird cripplers. I'm a bit of a tightwad myself, but by spending an extra buck per box, you can buy a better shotshell, typically a skeet or trap load. I've been told the target loads have more of the element "antimony" in the lead, thus harder shot, and more uniform patterns. If you're shooting bargain loads, splurge and see if you don't observe fewer birds flying away with a leg hanging down, and ultimately doomed, though likely not retrieved.

So do something bass-ackwards . . . shoot your dove & quail loads at clay targets, and shoot the trap and skeet loads at quail.

I'd received a number of telephone calls and e-mails from anxious quail hunters over the past several weeks asking frantically "where are all the quail?" After this week's killing frosts over much of north Texas, hunting reports have generally been better, and I'm not hearing near the concern.

One of the first things I do when I take a quail from my setters is to palpate (i.e., feel) the crop to see if it has much in it. I'll make you this wager . . . a blue quail will always have 2 to 3 times more volume of food in its crop than a bobwhite, regardless of the time of day.

The birds I've examined thus far have contained a lot of greens (e.g., filaree), some broomweed seeds, and not much else. Note that my lease doesn't have hardly any western ragweed; I've heard from some of you that your birds' crops are stuffed with seeds of ragweed by 9:30 a.m.

I did see a "first" on a hunt in Borden County recently. We shot 35 quail (most of them blues); at least 2 of the blues had maggots in their crop. I know quail will consume desert termites (albeit not in proportion to their abundance), but I'd never seen maggots in a crop before. Reckon those birds had feasted at a road-kill diner!

As you dig through quail crops, you can identify the more important seeds by comparing them to an online seed collection at http://teamquail.tamu.edu