Neal Bray Success Story from Nov 2009
Just thought I’d drop you a note. Sitting in my deer stand opening morning, starting to get light, when quail start whistling all around me. Undoubtedly something had busted them earlier and they decided to regroup right underneath my stand. Groups of four and five start marching in from different directions. It’s been a long time since I’ve watched quail from a deer stand. After they had gotten together and moved off to the south, a second covey flushed from the east and landed in a burn pile 20 yards from me. Both coveys probably had about a dozen birds each and they might have all been together at one time. Then on the way back to the house, I made the circle and flushed another covey of about a dozen birds. All of these birds were in locations that I haven’t seen quail in for a long time. So the CP-33 is working. Opening weekend of deer season sucked, but its exciting to see quail starting to come back. First time ever that our group that hunts out here has gotten skunked opening weekend of deer season. And we’ve been hunting together since probably 1985. I blame it on to much water in Oct. and to many crops still in the field. Better weather coming and it’s still early. Just wasn’t seeing very many deer before season. Need some colder weather and little pressure to push them back in.
Anyways, thought you would like to know about the quail.
Neal
John Hanes Success Story 2008
Back in the 1970’s my father, grandfather and I used to quail our 300 acre family farm located in southeast Saline County. The farm was left unattended and was overgrown in the fencerows, creek bottoms, brushy areas and crop fields. We could always count on flushing up to 5 or 6 coveys of quail on each hunt. During the 1980’s the fencerows were cleared, brushy areas and other areas of quality habitat were cleared off to help make the farm more productive. Shortly after the dozing, a damaging ice storm occurred and soon we were not seeing any quail.
Over the last 20 years we had had excellent success with deer and turkey hunting, but we no longer hunted the property for quail because of a lack of birds. In 2003, my wife Jennifer and I had a chance to purchase the family farm and build a house on the property.
One of my first priorities was to get the quail to return and stay on the property. I contacted my local USDA office where I met Brent Vandeloecht, a Private Lands Conservationist for MDC. He agreed to come to the farm and offer me some tips to help make the property more attractive to quail. Thanks to the help of Brent and the local Quail Unlimited chapter we implemented a wildlife management program geared towards quail.
Since, I did not own a tractor, I was afraid that it would be difficult to establish high quality quail habitat. Instead, it has helped me to become a “sloppy farmer”. By being a sloppy farmer, I now have areas that have grown back in brushy cover and the fencerows grown up in beneficial cover including plums and dogwoods. Some of the farm had been hayfields full of fescue. Since fescue has no value to quail, I took my ATV, a sprayer and some Round UP and began spraying. Some of the farm was already enrolled in a CRP filter strip program. This was planted in a variety of native grasses, but the grass had become too dense and lack forbs because of a lack of periodic disturbance.
In the spring of 2004 I attended a prescribed burn workshop offered by MDC and in 2005 a couple of friends and I took drip torches, leaf blowers and water sprayers furnished by the local SWCD and burned the filter strips and some old fields. That summer we had forbs and native grasses growing in the old fields and filter strips. We also made brush piles along the edges of the fields to enhance natural cover and soon we began to see quail again on the farm.
I knew I could still do more to improve the farm for quail so I contacted my farm operator Dan Weber. Together we decided to retire some of the unproductive cropland and enrolled those acres into the CP33 program. These field borders were planted to warm season grasses and forbs. Edgefeathering was conducted in several areas adjacent to the field borders. Now, we are again seeing 5 to 6 coveys of quail over different parts of the farm. We often notice that when we flush a covey of birds they head straight to the edge feathered areas. Furthermore, while these practices were intended to improve quail habitat, we have also noticed that we are helping the local deer and turkey populations as well.
During this time I also implemented a quality deer management program on the farm. We are aggressively harvesting as many does as possible and we allow small backs to walk. We have a little rule around the farm. “If you shoot a buck, it has to be stuffed!” This attitude is helping us see more mature bucks with larger racks in the last few years. We have even spotted some deer that we believe would make Boone and Crockett!
The turkey population has also increased from installing the various conservation programs. The turkeys are raising broods in the buffers with wildflowers and forbs. Last year we actually spotted gobblers utilizing in the prescribed burn areas before we were done conducting the burn on a filter strip.
To gain more knowledge of the different conservation programs available to farmers in our area, I have taken a master wildlife class offered by the University of Missouri-Extension to learn more about conservation practices. I also read the information in the Covey Headquarters newsletter as I find it extremely helpful. I am going to continue to do what I can to help wildlife on the farm. It is really great to see and hear quail again. By providing good cover, brushy areas, food plots, native grasses, forbs and prescribed burns, the quail and other wildlife will come.
Oran Boulden Success Story 2008
FAYETTE, Mo.‑The bobwhite quail has a special place in Oran Boulden’s
heart, thanks to spending his formative years on a farm in Howard
County. His love for the jaunty little game bird makes him a natural
ally for soil and wildlife conservationsts. It also makes him and
like‑minded farmers the future of quail in Missouri.
Boulden, a regional representative for Case‑New Holland farm and
construction equipment, came home to Missouri three years ago and took
over management of his family’s 160‑acre farm north of Fayette. He had
been gone for 17 years, much of it in Nebraska, where he hunted quail
and pheasant every weekend. Some seasons, he and his hunting buddies
harvested as many as 300 quail.
He brought his English pointers with him when he moved back to Missouri
but soon discovered that even the relatively modest 100‑quail‑per‑season
hunting of his youth had vanished. Not that the family farm had ever
been much good for hunting. Boulden recalls that even in his youth he
had to look elsewhere for quail.
“When I was in college in the early ‘80s we hunted quail heavily in
this area,” recalls Boulden. “I never hunted the farm, because there
was never any birds there. I think it was habitat. If it wasn’t trees
or crops it was fescue. There were some tree lines taken out, and our
farming practices consisted of heavy tillage. We disked twice in the
spring and chisel plowed in the fall.”
If anything, the quail situation was worse when he returned home. It
wasn’t hopeless, though. Bobwhites still called from an abandoned
railroad right‑of‑way north of the family farm. Then he found Brent
Vandeloecht.
Vandeloecht is a private land conservationist with the Missouri
Department of Conservation. It is his job to help landowners fulfill
their conservation ambitions. Boulden called him even before moving back
to Missouri, looking for ways to bring quail back to his family farm.
“I’m a quail hunter myself,” says Vandeloecht. “Wildlife
management in general is a passion for me. That’s what I do on
weekends. I’m always doing something to try to improve the wildlife
habitat on my own property.”
Boulden’s farm actually had fairly good potential for quail habitat.
About three‑quarters of the land consisted of small fields. There were
two 4‑ to 5‑acre hayfields, four row‑crop fields ranging from 15 to 19
acres and two fields of 6 and 7 acres enrolled in the Conservation
Reserve Program (CRP). A sprinkling of woodlots made up the remaining
quarter of the farm.
Quail thrive in a patchwork of small fields and woodland. A mix of
weedy edges and crops provide food. Diverse grasslands create nesting
areas, and a brushy edge between fields and woods provide shelter from
weather and predators. Such diverse landscapes were the norm during the
bobwhite quail’s heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, but they are
increasingly rare today.
While the Boulden’s farm had potential, it lacked some key elements
of quail habitat. For one thing, it did not have the kind of grassland
suited to quail nesting. And while it had a mix of forest and open land,
the dividing line between forest and field was razor sharp. There were
almost no brush piles or shrubby cover in between.
Together, Boulden and Vandeloecht developed a plan to remedy these
deficiencies. To make the plan affordable, they tapped resources
provided under the federal farm bill.
The CRP paid for Conservation Practice 33 (CP‑33, habitat buffers),
planting native, warm‑season grasses around the edges of crop fields.
These strips of little bluestem and sideoats grama grass and native
broadleaf plants make excellent quail nesting habitat. They also help
prevent loss of valuable topsoil to erosion.
Erosion was a real problem along the creek running through the Boulden
farm. In this area, CRP paid for Conservation Practice 21 (CP‑21,
riparian filter strips), planting native, warm‑season grasses even more
densely than under CP‑33, but still good quail habitat.
Boulden and his son, Jordan, created patches of woody cover for quail
at the edges of cropland and CRP fields by felling small trees, a
practice known as edge feathering. They got help from the Conservation
Department converting some of the fescue grass on their farm to native,
warm‑season grasses. By the end of their first year’s labor they began
to see results.
“I was out on the tractor in October of 2006 planting wheat and
flushed about 12 quail,” said Boulden. “I was really excited. I
called Brent right away and said, ‘Hey, I saw a covey of birds!’
That is the first time I have seen birds on the property since 1980.”
In the spring of 2007, while working near some of the edge‑feathering,
Boulden saw a cock bobwhite and two hens nesting around the new cover.
More recently, he has been a little discouraged by tough breaks from
the weather. He has not seen any quail since last year’s late‑spring
freeze and December’s devastating ice storm. But Vandeloecht says the
farm now has what it takes to sustain quail through hard times.
“They did a really good job of establishing their warm‑season grasses
and got a really good stand,” he said. “They have done about 2 acres
of edge feathering, which is quite a bit of work on a 160‑acre farm.
He’s got some high‑quality woody cover and plenty of nesting
habitat. I think his birds should make it.”
Boulden and his son continue to work at creating quail habitat. They
use no‑till farming practices, and they leave 15‑ to 20‑foot strips of
soybeans and other crops standing beside edge‑feathered areas to ensure
that quail have food close by when sitting out winter storms. They plan
to spray herbicide to reduce fescue and get legumes growing around edge
feathering, and they are working to get better stands of warm‑season
grasses growing on levees. Finally, they are working with Conservation
Department foresters to develop a forest stewardship plan for the farm.
“Quail habitat didn’t disappear overnight, and it doesn’t come
back overnight,” said Vandeloecht. “It takes time, and you have to
keep at it every year, but the Bouldens are gaining on it. They are in
it for the long haul.”
Vandeloecht said more than 90 percent of Missouri’s total acreage is
privately owned. Consequently, the future of bobwhite quail in the
Show‑Me State hinge on the efforts of people like the Bouldens.
“Creating quail habitat on conservation areas and all the other
public land in the state can’t bring back the bobwhite,” said
Vandeloecht. “We can offer help, but it is going to take a lot of
folks like Oran and Jordan to make it happen.”
‑Jim Low‑
