I started in 1970 trying to bring back bobwhite quail. Through the 1980's and till about 2000, I was doing reall well. I had about 100 acres of CRP that was in native grass, had brushpiles throughout, some edge feathering and lots of quail. Then they changed the CRP rules in about 2002, and our ground lost out by one point on the new national eligibility scale. So all that went back into row crops and the quail are gone. So I started over on my home farm, bought a neighboring 50 acres, and basically started from scratch. I am just starting to see an occassional covey, and now we have these two bitter spells, with snow, and ice. We had snow cover on almost all of January. Now, the whole idea of quail mgt. is to have a variety of cover, all in close proximity to other types of habitat. Nesting, feeding, deep cover for bad weather, and food sources. They say if your doing a good job of that, you will be able to get them through bad weather. Well, I spotted a nice covey in early Feb, after it had warmed up. So I thought I was OK. Now, we are in another bitter cold snap. This time I broke down and bought several hundred pounds of cracked corn. I just came in from putting out some feeding stations. Scrapped the snow back and put a pile of corn down. Might not be necessary, but hey, what am I gonna do? Work? Nnaaaaahhhh.
Take care, Gene