The bobwhite quail is in trouble. Long thought to be a problem that solely centered around habitat, some are now questioning the validity of the habitat paradigm.
The bobwhite quail’s extirpation first started in the southeastern United States and over the past half century, their numbers dwindled over most of their historic range. Some states lost as much as 5% of their quail population annually and in states like Georgia, the Carolinas, and most of the south, bobwhites only exist in isolated pockets . Historically, throughout South Texas and Northwest Texas, the population remained relatively steady.
As the quail decline creeped westward, parts of Texas seemed to be immune from the decline. Big swathes of real estate that remained largely unchanged over the past century held abundant bobwhites and their numbers, it seemed, were only influenced by the fickle rainfall cycles. When abundant rains fell, quail seemed to sprout from the red dirt scrubland. When seasonal rains were scant, the numbers staggered but bobwhites were still abundant - especially when compared to other parts of the nation.
Abundant quail numbers once meant an economic boom to rural communities in quail country. A 2011 survey indicated that Texas quail hunters spent an average of $1000 per day to hunt quail or about $253 for each bird they harvested. At least half that money was spent in local communities where the hunters leased land and bought supplies locally. With the decline in quail, small towns are feeling the pinch and hunters are giving up on the gamebird. Since 1980, the decline of the number of resident quail hunters in Texas is pushing 79%.
Over much of the state the quail population has declined 80% over the past 30 years and in 2009, roadside counts conducted by the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department recorded the lowest numbers since quail official counting started in 1978. From 2005 to 2009the mean number of birds counted in what was once considered a last bastion of wild quail plummeted by 84%. In the ensuing three years, the numbers simply haven’t gotten any better.
The problem with the quail decline is the experts don’t seem to know exactly where the problem lies.
Even the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department (TPWD) is a bit flummoxed and is throwing their resources at the problem. In March of 2012 the department pulled together biologists and policy shapers to confront the decline.
“To make sure that we had all the facts and science, we pulled together a Quail Science Meeting to review numerous aspects of quail management,” says Wildlife Division Director Clayton Wolf. “The quail science team concluded that IF TPWD were to change quail regulations for the western part of Texas, a shorter season would be the most appropriate. However, the group, and subsequently TPWD staff and the TPWD Commission, agreed that a change in seasons or bag limits would not be a solution to declining or disappearing populations.”
He says the meeting’ s recommendation was to put the deparetment resources into quail focus areas.
“Quail focus areas are the national model for successful bobwhite recovery,” Wolf says. “In addition to the existing focus areas, we plan to add at least one more in North Central Texas, and we plan to fund a monitoring component to these initiatives, so we can scientifically measure the impacts of these initiatives on bobwhite.”
Mainstream academia says it’s habitat, habitat, habitat. However, with habitat that’s largely unchanged over great swaths of traditional quail strongholds, some who are questioning the status quo.
Thankfully, a coterie of passionate hunter-conservationists here are investing time and capital in an effort to figure out what's happening. If they're successful, they'll not just save the birds of the Rolling Plains, but potentially help return bobwhites to areas where wild birds haven't been hunted for decades.
The Grassroots Activist
“Everybody has their different ideas on what’s happening to the quail,” says Chuck Ribelin of Dallas. “Scientists have studied the quail decline but no one has come up with a real good answer as to why.”
If modern quail hunting needs a patriarch, Ribelin is a good candidate. Genial and gracious, Ribelin has been hunting quail for forty years and to his chagrin, has seen the opportunities to hunt the birds dwindle to the point where he is afraid that strong populations will never return. Feeling like he had to do something, he started a letter writing campaign and meeting frequently with state officials over a decade ago in order to lobby the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department (TPWD) to change their approach to managing the game bird.
“When I noticed the quail decline, I started writing the state wildlife department officials. The response I got form them just seemed establish the point that Texas land is 98% private ownership and they don’t have any control over what’s going on. I never felt like that was the proper leadership they were displaying because they could have defined the problem in a more meaningful way that what they they were doing.”
He argues that the the Texas Parks & Wildlife has done virtually nothing to figure it out the quail’s demise and have done even less to modify the hunting season to address the problem.
Ribelin thinks the solution is to manipulate the season on a regional basis - much like deer hunting is done. Therefore, he continues to pressure the state agency and lobbies fellow hunters to join him in his cause.
“I think there are a lot of quail hunters out there who would be willing to sacrifice their season if the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department would get everyone the research and information that they need. It is going to take the landowners ad the hunters getting on the same page in order to save the bobwhite.”
The Land Manager
Being raised in the old east coast quail country, Rick Snipes (a native of North Carolina) remembers the day when quail were plentiful in his home state. As he grew into adulthood, the birds and the old landscapes that supported them disappeared. So Snipes, now in his 60’s, did like so many others and secured a Texas hunting lease to hunt wild quail with big running pointers.
He loved that ranch so much that in 1991, he bought the place and he and his wife Lana have been living on the ranch and managing the cattle and quail for the benefit of both species. By most accounts, the Snipes Ranch in Stonewall County may have been the finest bobwhite property in the country.
“As of late as 2008, finding 30 coveys of birds a day on this ranch was the norm,” says Snipes as we sit on the porch of his ranch house. “As recently as 2008 we've had several afternoons where we've jumped 30 coveys.”
Snipes says that up to that point, all of his management practices were benefitting the quail and habitat in textbook fashion. The idea amongst biologists have always been fairly formulaic: good habitat and decent weather equals lots of quail. In 2009, things started to slip.
“We had a drought that hurt us really bad,” Snipes remembers. “Our bird population declined significantly but it was not unexpected. In 2010 we had a really wet year. We expected a modest rebound but we did not get it.”
He reports that quail populations in 2010 was worse than 2009.
“In fact, I had lots of birds through 2010 and yet when the season rolled around, they were gone. I went from riding up 14 coveys of birds on horseback in less than an hour on July 18 to seeing no birds in September of that same year. That was the first time in my experience that the bird population didn’t follow what we were led to expect.”
Snipes is convinced that the problem isn’t just habitat although he does admit that he is not completely sure where the problem lies. Although he suspects that disease may ultimately be the smoking gun. He is somewhat outspoken when it comes to how much (or how little) the academic world has contributed to the current quail management paradigm.
“When it comes to our quail problem, I don't think wildlife biologist have contributed very much to where we are today. I think some of them are victims of their own thinking and slaves to the orthodoxy.”
Aside from managing his own ranch, Snipes wanted to take a leadership position in answering the enigmatic problems that bobwhites face. Consequently, he became the president of the board of directors that oversee operations on the Rolling Plains Quail Research Ranch (RPQRR). The ranch is a sprawling 5,000 acres and is a giant land lab that focus on habitat considerations, disease, parasite, and breeding dynamics that affect quail.
According to Snipes, how disease affects native quail hasn’t been earnestly studied by the scientific community since the 1920’s. Too many scientists, he concludes, are quick to bow to the orthodoxy of habitat being the singular issue that affects the birds. No longer, he says.
“I told my board that I’d have a serious problem looking at my friends five years from now and saying that ‘we have a wonderful research foundation, a wonderful research ranch, and have a few million dollars in the endowment but we don’t know anything because we haven’t asked any questions.’
We are not going to be in that situation.”
The Philanthropist
“My dad used to always say, ‘Son, you are getting ready to participate in a sport that’s only fit for kings.’” T. Boone Pickens says of his early days quail hunting. “That quote stuck with me so much that I’d tell my boys the same thing when we’d go hunting.”
As we set in the heart of his sprawling Texas Panhandle ranch north of Amarillo he talks about the reason why he bought the first parcel of this ranch way back in 1971. It was the bird hunting.
Since 1942, he’s been passionate about quail hunting. As a boy he started hunting with his dad near his boyhood home in Holdenville, Oklahoma. Frequently, he’d travel to different parts of Oklahoma to hunt with relatives but as he grew older, the birds steadily disappeared. Over time, he began to add acreage to his ranch and started managing earnestly for quail on the sandy hilled ranch along the south bank of the Canadian River. For a while, his intense management worked. Even with carefully managed hunting, Pickens and his numerous invited guest would harvest 5,000 quail annually. That number maintained itself well until 2009. Last season, they only shot 500.
Pickens is someone who believes that its the private sportsman, and not government who will save the quail. So much so, he is willing to put his resources on the line to help support the research endeavors.
As a member of Park Cities Quail (PCQ) - a non profit organization ran by Dallas area volunteers who raises money for quail research and youth education, Pickens has been one of the group’s key fundraisers lending his considerable clout to help raise money and awareness of the quail’s plight.
He’s put his own money into the research projects carried out by the RPQRR and each year, he donates first class hunts on his ranch. The hunts are auctioned off to raise money for PCQ’s efforts. Unlike many conservation groups, 100% of the money raised goes directly to the group’s sponsored projects. So far, they’ve raised over $4 million over the past three years.
“I think private individuals are the key to solving this problem. We’ll fix it,” he says confidently.
The Scientist
“When I was 5 my mom said, ‘Do you you hear that bird? It calls its name: bob - white.’ That bird’s been calling my name every since.”
For 21 years, Dr. Dale Rollins has been a wildlife specialist for Texas Cooperative Extension and most recently, he’s taken on the role as the director of the PCQ funded Rolling Plains Quail Research Ranch. A PhD in wildlife biology, he’s best known as a quail evangelist who preaches the “gospel” at gatherings all over the state and nation. He is the creator of the nationally recognized Bobwhite Brigade Youth Camp - a week long educational bootcamp that teaches high school age kids leadership skills wrapped in a cohesive, conservation-themed message and the positive role of hunters in managing wildlife. It’s a curriculum that’s been adopted and implemented in other states where quail are found.
His greatest contribution to quail-dom may come from his down home personality. He has the intellect of a college professor but the communicative abilities of a feed store cut up. He’s a great story teller and when he talks, ranchers, hunters, and others interested in quail hunting and wildlife conservation can’t help but listen. Above all, he’s an innovative thinker.
“General George Patton once said that if everybody is thinking the same, then somebody’s not thinking,” he says while we are taking a break on the side of the road on the research ranch. Even though it is not quail season, his brace of pointing dogs are riding the quail buggy with him and they sleep in the warm spring sun while we talk.
“I was at a meeting in Tallahassee, Florida in the late 1990‘s and I heard one biologist after the next say the quail wave played itself out in their respective states. I thought, ‘That’s not going to happen on my watch.’”
Rollins and his team of researcher are in the process of trying to turn over every proverbial stone that may be tied to the quail demise. They know habitat is a traditional concern but with the funding from the PCQ, they are working with cooperating researchers from several Texas universities on an immense $2 million research endeavor called Operation Idiopathic Decline. Starting in 2011, cooperating scientists are looking at diseases, parasites, and environmental contaminants as a cause for the quail decline. Right now it’s too early to report what may be happening to the quail but Rollins says they found some interesting things that may be cause for concern like an abundance of eyeworms.
“My profession says that if you are worried about quail, then it is habitat, habitat, habitat. If it rains we’ll have quail if it don’t we won’t,” he confides. “But as we look across West Texas we say ‘what’s happening to the habitat,’ we don’t see anything. I think there has to be something else.”
Rollins says that in five years he and his team of researchers can discover what’s happening to the iconic species and stem the tide of their decline. Once they’ve stopped the bleeding in the Texas Rolling Plains, he hopes that their research models and modalities are translated eastward and begin restoring quail across the south and southeastern United States.
“I’d like the think that before I hang it up, we do have quail further east than what we do now. If that’s true then we’ll still have people and their bird dogs who will enjoy that very magical experience of walking up on a covey rise on a frosty morning.”
SIDEBAR
Dale Rollins thinks that hunters in the field are an essential link for trying to figure out the quail conundrum and he encourages hunters to stay involved and report anything unusual to him at the RPQRR. By developing a corp of eyes and ears in the field, he thinks that everyday quail hunters can help the scientists solve the problem by helping collect research samples and anecdotal information.
Rick Snipes and T. Boone Pickens encourages hunters to get involved at a grassroots level by joining conservation organizations and actively helping raise money for research and habitat initiatives.
Chuck Ribelin believes that quail hunters should become more politically active and engage positively with state wildlife officials. “I suspect that if the same decline was happening to white-tailed deer, hunters would quickly mobilize on the state capital lawn,” Ribelin postulates. “Quail hunters need to have the same mentality.”
For more information and how to help stem the quail decline, check out these websites:
The Rolling Plains Quail Research Ranch www.quailresearch.org
Park Cities Quail www.parkcitiesquail.org
Quail Unlimited www.qu.org
Quail Forever www.quailforever.org