Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Around the Campfire => Topic started by: criveraville on December 23, 2011, 04:56:07 am
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The other day Diego and I were talking. Well if you know Diego it was actually Diego talking and I was listening and answering his questions. Gus, Jackcrafty, Tower and George can attest to this ;) He wanted to know how many ducks I had harvested. He is keeping count. So far this season he has taken two and I have taken three. He took his first duck the other day with a single shot 20 ga. The boy was grinning from ear to ear.
I explained that when I was a kid we didn't have a place to hunt were I could hunt ducks but I told him that I hunted quail all the time. That is when he asked me a very sad question. "Daddy what are quail?" Diego has never heard a Bobwhite in the spring, seen them run or been scared out of his boots when a covey takes off. I never would have imagined that when I was a kid. The fun experiences with quail he has missed out on and will continue to miss out on saddens me.
FIRE ANTS..
Cipriano
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Ya they are about gone around here in TN. also,between development,Turkeys/coyotes/hawks and owls,[nothing
aganist Hawks and owls ],but there are way to many around
here the quail don't have a chance. This use to be quail country. :(
Pappy
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I guess its been to long since I have been down south, I didn't realise that y'all didn't still have plenty of Bobwhites I know we lost all ours in the blizzard of 76!
We have put some out but they don't thrive like they used to.
Guy
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They're pretty scarce down here also. Used to be a lot of palmetto and blackberry patches they could hide in but now it's houses.
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I'm in the same boat as Diego. I've never seen or heard them either.
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I grew up in Southeast Nebr hunting quail. To my Dad they were The Bird. Quail hunting was real hunting. Other animals were what you hunted until quail season opened. Kind of a nationwide decline in a wonderful bird. Land use is much different than it was 40 yrs ago. If habitat is good, predators, weather, etc don't have much affect. Did I mention that they are delicious!
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@Criveraville - Bring him on out to Yosemite - got lots around my house he can look at. There are places where you can hunt them too. We got mountain quail in Yosemite with straight tops and Valley quail with curved tops in the foothills. Been watchin broods bein raised up for a couple of years now.
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Cipriano, Where I grew up quail were rare and usually shot only cause they got in the way when out duck hunting. Having a covey flush just as you're sneaking up on slough full of mallards could be a real surprise! My family never held them in much esteem, as they were too small, especially after being shot with a full choked 12g. I hadn't realized that bob white were in decline. Ron
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The hunting club I used to belong to outside of Athens GA had a fair amount of quail after it was cleat cut and replanted in pines. A few club members hunted quail but also raised and released quite a few. They said if you released them young enough they had a better chsance of survival.
I think the loss of habitat has really put a hurting on the quail populations.
I've always thought quail would be a good quarry for bow hunters even though I've never hunted them.
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Pappy, Mullet and Kpete, I didn't realize quail were scarce in other states as well. Guy that must have been some blizzard!
Kpete they are delicious. Too bad it's been too long since I had any.
Ben that would be great. It's been since 99 that I was there.
Ron, they will put the fear of God in you when they flush at your feet. Now ducks.. Diego and I have been jumping a tank and wd have harvested some gadwells and ringnecks.
Pat they would make a fine quarry with a bow. My whole young years I shoot a dove with my pellet gun, but quail I bagged weekly during the season. Their stopping and pausing gives you a few seconds to take a shoot. They would Aldo fly up on a tree branch or a barked wire and give you a chance.
I sure miss them. Clint that is truly sad.
Cipriano
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The best quail habitat on the planet is an osage hedge row around a grain field. Southern Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, some of southern Iowa and quite a bit of Illinois used to be prime quail habitat with hedges around their fields. Predators, including humans could not push through those thorny tangles to get at the quail and they thrived. However, modern farmers have removed most of the hedges to enable them to cultivate right up to the fence. Not only are there fewer quail, but there's more wind erosion without the protection of those hedges. There's also a heck of a lot less bow wood. :( :(
Quail may be small, but they make up for it in taste. :) I've seen one pair on the lease down here Cip. With all the fire ants I don't know how they could survive. I don't know how the turkeys successfully nest either.
George
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Only had one experience with Fire ant visiting my aunt in Louisiana. We got lots of brush that makes berries out west and the mountains are not good for large crop ag so there are quite a few quail around. Enough that they occassionally get hit on the highway.
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There were predators chasing quail when our ancestors were hanging by their tails throwing poop at lions in Africa. The question is how much habitat do they have. Here in South Dakota farmers are tearing out fencerows and plowing from the edge of one road to another and complaining that the GF&P isn't doing anything to support the pheasant numbers. They are draining wetlands wholesale when those same people were sent into cattails as kids to flush the roosters out for their fathers and uncles. Monoculture cornfields are fine for a pheasant to feed in during part of the day but where do they go to nest, hide from predators, loaf, or chase grasshoppers?
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gstoneberg,
Yep, ny first quail was shot next to a Hedge row on a milo field. English pointer locked on point. 11 years old and a Stevens O/U .410. Those were grand days.
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Very cool. I didn't kill my first quail until moving from Iowa to Illinois. We were too far north to see many quail. I used to take my brittany and hunt hedge rows. Not very productive unless I found a hole to shoot through. 2 people and a dog was much more productive. Great memories for sure.
George
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yep,
Pop was on one side and I was on the other. My first was a single that had landed out in the milo and
Dad's pointer locked up on him. I later got a Brit Spaniel as well. Lots of shot hit the hedge and no birds at times. Those bobwhites could get from one side of the Osage row to the other in a hurry. Only 40 or so years ago.
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Well this is a sad, but true thread. Lots of good points JW.. Folks are doing away with fences down in these parts too. Kpete that gun sounds sweet.
I have hear that hedges were so effective that they even kept pigs in.
Cipriano
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I also shot my first squirrel from a hedge row. They are close to my heart.
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When I was 12 my dad got a job in Ottawa so we moved from our home in the country to a suburb on the Western end of Ottawa called Britannia. Right across the street from where we lived was a large undeveloped area, a conservation area I believe, that had a large field in it. Oddly enough in this field was a small flock of Quail. Coming from the country I was quite used to going out any time I felt like it with a bow hunting for small game and these Quail were like gifts from heaven. I remember going out and flinging arrows at them many times. They were smart and would never let me get very close them, you could see when they were getting nervous, so shots were more often than not fairly long. I never arrowed one but came close many times. Our neighbours must have wondered what I was doing going out with bow and arrows, I'm sure that if they had know I was hunting they would have called the cops. We were in Ottawa for 4 years and I have wondered whatever happened to them.
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I grew up with an English setter named Joe. :) A better pet there never was, he was definitely a member of our family and a great hunting dog as well. There was a friend of the family who owned a Brittany, and he and my dad would hunt together often behind our house where there was several hundred acres of undeveloped property with quite a few quail. I often begged my way into getting to go with them as a boy. I remember so many times busting up the covey, then going after the singles.
I also remember flushing a covey right at my feet when dark headed into a deer stand...talk about getting your heart racing! I can't remember when I last saw a quail, been years.
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my grandpa always said quail hatched running. and he musta been right. many a time while growing up i would stumble across a quail nest . . never returned in a day or two that they werent gone. hardly a sign there was ever a nest there cept a few of the shells left scattered. yup, hatch running...
those quail dinners were something to look forward to.
and time in the woods hunting with my pops, grandpa and eldest brother are treasured memories.
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Game birds, like Sadiejane's father said, are born running. In bird-speak they use the word "precocial", or able to feed themselves and move on their own. They usually bail on the nest within hours of hatching and never look back! The wild thing is that the eggs are all laid over a series of days, even weeks, but they all hatch within minutes of each other.
A turkey biologist claims they are hatched knowing how good they taste to everyone and everything!
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...The wild thing is that the eggs are all laid over a series of days, even weeks, but they all hatch within minutes of each other.
You know why that is JW, you're baiting me. But I can't help myself... :-[ It's not the laying that starts the process, it's the setting. Great design too. :)
George
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So times you don't know how fortunate you are until others point it out to you. We bought our farm 12 years ago. I've let 30 of the 50 acres grow up. I'm fortunate to have a couple covey off quail hanging out here. Most every morning in the deer stand I was greeted by the songs of Mr. Bob White. It always bring a smile to my face.
I have 2 Britany Spaniels. We rarely hunt our coveys, maybe once a year. I usually buy some birds for our outings.
Funny thing about the timing for this topic, the weekend of the 13-15 is our annual "condo weekend" This will be the 35th year some of us collage friends we get together for a man weekend of hunting, drinking, poker playing and lying to one another. We will release 100 quail and hunt them in 4 cast. What's cool is now many of us have sons who are "of age" and will be joining us. I can't wait.
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"my grandpa always said quail hatched running. "
Johnny Carson quipped that CA had the only state bird (CA quail) that" jogs instead of flying".
Ron
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...The wild thing is that the eggs are all laid over a series of days, even weeks, but they all hatch within minutes of each other.
You know why that is JW, you're baiting me. But I can't help myself... :-[ It's not the laying that starts the process, it's the setting. Great design too. :)
George
Biologists have recorded the chicks of several species of birds "pipping" at varying rates of speed in the days before hatching. The closer to the hatch event they start to synchronize their pipping. They hypothesize that this allows them to hatch all at once and get off the next fast before a predator snacks on them and also allows Mamma bird to know when to get ready. Yeah, birds are pretty cool.
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This thread really takes me back home and back 30 years.
Dad and I kept track of the numbers of quail in each covey on each farm we hunted. We kept track of how many we killed and when the coveys were reduced a bit we left them alone the rest of the year, moving on to other coveys on other farms.
We hunted a couple places that were so thick and nasty that we had difficulty harvesting any even with lots of effort. Often we came out of those thorn patches having shed more blood than the covey. Plum brush and multiflora rose extracted a price. Dad always loved to dive in the thick stuff with the dogs and let the others walk the outsides.
Band-aids and mecurochrome(sp) were always in the pick-up.
I learned to cook because of quail-well sort of. I had walked from home with my brit. spaniel and managed to shoot a few bobwhites. I came home and cleaned them and was looking forward to Mom cooking them for supper. She said she and dad were going to play cards at some friends. I told her I had hoped that she would cook them for supper. She said, "You can do it!" She outlined the method for quail in sage and onion stuffing. It started me on one of my fondest hobbies-wild game cooking.
I remember going on many a Saturday trip and stopping for lunch at some abandoned farmstead. Ham and cheese on rye were a favorite and home canned apple cider(grandad had lots of apple trees), and a snickers bar for desert. Dad had a thermos of coffee. IF it was warm we laid out in the shade, if it was cool we laid out in the sun, and if it was winder we got out of the wind or sat in the truck. Grand times. At that time you could go around the Nebraska country side and stop in at farm house and ask permission to hunt-usually getting it if you gave them your name and hometown.
Thanks for starting this thread and all the contributions. I have enjoyed it.
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This thread really takes me back home and back 30 years.
Dad and I kept track of the numbers of quail in each covey on each farm we hunted. We kept track of how many we killed and when the coveys were reduced a bit we left them alone the rest of the year, moving on to other coveys on other farms.
We hunted a couple places that were so thick and nasty that we had difficulty harvesting any even with lots of effort. Often we came out of those thorn patches having shed more blood than the covey. Plum brush and multiflora rose extracted a price. Dad always loved to dive in the thick stuff with the dogs and let the others walk the outsides.
Band-aids and mecurochrome(sp) were always in the pick-up.
I learned to cook because of quail-well sort of. I had walked from home with my brit. spaniel and managed to shoot a few bobwhites. I came home and cleaned them and was looking forward to Mom cooking them for supper. She said she and dad were going to play cards at some friends. I told her I had hoped that she would cook them for supper. She said, "You can do it!" She outlined the method for quail in sage and onion stuffing. It started me on one of my fondest hobbies-wild game cooking.
I remember going on many a Saturday trip and stopping for lunch at some abandoned farmstead. Ham and cheese on rye were a favorite and home canned apple cider(grandad had lots of apple trees), and a snickers bar for desert. Dad had a thermos of coffee. IF it was warm we laid out in the shade, if it was cool we laid out in the sun, and if it was winder we got out of the wind or sat in the truck. Grand times. At that time you could go around the Nebraska country side and stop in at farm house and ask permission to hunt-usually getting it if you gave them your name and hometown.
Thanks for starting this thread and all the contributions. I have enjoyed it.
I heard recently that in the last 10 years the number of upland game hunters had declined nationally by 40%. The main reason given was that they could find nowhere to hunt. Makes you sad to think that in 30 years the memories of when they were a kid will be things like how his Dad's hollering at the football team on the 82" bigscreen interrupted the texting session with his "friends" from social media.