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HOW TO HAVE MORE QUAIL
What’s the Big Lie About Quail Management
 EDITOR’S
NOTE: You can hunt quail as well as deer and turkey
on your hunting lease or at your hunting club with very
little investment and not much work. According to Dr.
Bill Palmer, game bird specialist at Tall Timbers Research
Station in Tallahassee, Florida, "Most outdoorsmen
will be satisfied to go out with their buddies and a
bird dog and find two to three coveys of quail in a
half-day's hunt. Hunters can create this type of hunting
ground on all kinds of forest land with minimal effort."
This week, we’ll learn how to have more quail
on the property where you hunt and the history behind
why the quail populations across the U.S. have declined.
 For
years, outdoorsmen have spread the same lie that, "Quail
management is too expensive for a landowner or a hunting
club to carry out." However, Dr. Palmer reports
that, "you may be surprised at just how many quail
you can have at a low cost -- if you simply manipulate
the habitat. A little bit of quail habitat will go a
long way to give you quail as a usable, fun resource
for hunting." Simple habitat manipulations that
increase the amount of quail habitat as well as the
numbers of quail on your property include:
* leaving small field borders of weeds around the land's
green field s and agricultural crops,
* thinning minimally and using fire and herbicides like
Arsenal and Habitat and
* doing a minimal amount of supplemental feeding.
 "Most
hunting clubs and leases can spend about $1,000 a year
on controlled burning, harrowing and applying herbicides
to produce one to two quail on every 5 acres of land
in their leases," Dr. Palmer advises. "With
this quail density, sportsmen will pinpoint two to four
coveys for every half-day hunt." The ability to
locate two to four coveys per half-day will add a tremendous
amount of hunting opportunities to most hunting-club
leases and also will justify several members owning
bird dogs and becoming active quail hunters.
TOMORROW: HOW TO HAVE NO-COST AND LOW-COST QUAIL MANAGEMENT
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