GUNS Magazine September 1959

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Moving into cover after Bob White are hunters who find altered farming methods have driven quail to the brush. By GEORGE McKENNA QUAIL HUNTERS are complaining that the birds are gone. "It ain't like the old days," they tell. "The birds just ain't there. Either a disease has killed them off, or imported birds like the coturnix and those ground-running scaled ones have driven the native 'bob-whites' off." They're all wrong. The quail are still here; it's just that they have changed their habits and old hunting methods won't work any more. It used to be that quail hunting was a com· paratively easy-going sport for open country. When I was a boy, we hunted with big boned dogs that 26 <strong>GUNS</strong> SEPTEMBER <strong>1959</strong> r
worked well ahead of the guns, and almost all of the shots were made in the open. After a covey rise, the singles would go down close enough so we could mark where they landed and go right after them. All of this is changed now, and I think the change is because farming methods have become so different. Quail like weed seeds. Extensive checks by game biologists have proved that ragweed seeds make up a major item in the quail's diet during the hunting season. Along with weeds to eat, they need good heavy cover in which they can hide from their enemies. Both the heavy cover and weeds used to be found on small farms where mules and human muscles provided the 'power for farm work. Thick hedgerows were common, and crops were often left standing after they ripened, giving birds both food and cover until the farmer could get around to his harvest. low, the average farm is much larger, the old fences and hedgerows have been ripped out, and the farm field may reach a mile or more between covers. Pastures are clipped close; tilled land is cultivated by tractors; weeds are kept out; crops are harvested as soon as they are ripe by machines which leave nothing in the fields except stubble. Often large amounts of shattered grain are left, but no amount of grain can keep quail on the land if there isn't enough cover. A few landowners who like to hunt, or who realize the value of birds in controlling insects, try to remedy the situation by making plantings of cover crops along the edges of cultivated fields and in clearings. If they are left standing all winter, and if the cover is really adequate, these plantings can be a big help in keeping quail around. As yet, however, they have been made on much too small a scale to have any great effect on the quail population. This means that the man who wants to hunt quail will simply have to forget about the farming country where he used to find birds, and go where they have gone. That's what I did last season. The first areas I hunted were the tracts of mature woodland near farming sections. I found a few quail here, but not enough. I think those quail were only there by chance, perhaps fleeing from fields that had just been stripped bare of cover, but not finding enough of food in the woods to make their new home. The only places I did find the birds in lar
Page 6 and 7: MODEL 30 The action's fast! ... you
Page 8 and 9: SURE AS SHOOTIN' ;;»C 3 SHOTS P RI
Page 14 and 15: Four times National Fast Draw Champ
Page 16 and 17: Safe for fast draw since gas blast
Page 19: RIFLE SAGA Single shot loading proc
Page 22 and 23: WHITE HUNTER SAYS AFRICA'S MOST DAN
Page 24: Old faru moved to top of white hunt
Page 29 and 30: Small town officers who are nut bou
Page 32 and 33: Big sheep trophies, highly prized b
Page 35: James guns at Huntington are New Mo
Page 53: $ • • • •••••••

GUNS Magazine September 1959

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?