By Jim Darnell
Quail hunting in Texas is usually feast or famine from season to season. Last year was feast. This year, with a few exceptions, is famine.
Last year San Marcos local Ron Carnes hunted with his son-in-law out west near Spur. Birds were everywhere. They shot their limits, even without a dog, quickly. This year it was so poor they didn’t even try.
Texas Parks and Wildlife Quail Program leader, Robert Perez, reported that most of the state has experienced poor hunting; some places were fair, with a few localized spots as good.
“It’s no mystery,” Perez said. “We had no rain last winter, spring or summer. Winter rains are very important to quail. In late winter quail diet switches over from seed to greens. Green stuff provides vitamins to build up their bodies for breeding. No rains. No greens. Less reproduction.”
But it gets worse.
“Without spring rains the insect population is scarce,” Perez said. “Insects are a big part of quail diet. Then no summer rains mean no moisture to help the eggs hatch.”
All this adds up to poor quail hunting this year. But my brother Bill from Memphis hunted with a friend in November on his ranch west of Lubbock near the New Mexico border and found good numbers of quail. When Bill called me and reported their hunt I said, “Let’s go.”
Schedules, circumstances and holidays made it impossible to go until mid-January. I told Bill that mid-January can be very different than mid-November for quail. Natural attrition can take the numbers way down. Especially if there had been blizzards, snow and ice. He didn’t think it would matter since the grass cover on the ranch was good.
As I drove the long trek across Texas I thought, “This is sure a long way to drive to shoot a quail.” But I love to hunt quail and if the hunting turned out good it would be worth it.
I stopped at a park in Sterling City to let my lab, Lady, take a pit stop. Bill had reported to me that they lost half the birds that they shot because of the heavy grass cover. They just couldn’t find any of the cripples and many dead birds. That’s why Lady was riding with me. She would put a stop to that losing birds business.
After I picked up Bill at the Lubbock International Airport we stopped for a few supplies, including several bags of Milo maize and cracked corn. We planned to spread the grain along miles of dirt roads on the ranch to pull the birds out of the grass.
It didn’t take us long to get started. With Lady riding in the back of the open Jeep, Bill began to drive us slowly around the ranch while I scattered the grain.
By dark we had seen only one covey of bobwhites. We got two birds out of it.
But we did get a bonus. Just before sunset Bill saw a bird cross a narrow dirt lane. It was too big for a bobwhite. Too big for a blue quail. We jumped out of the jeep and flushed seven lesser prairie chickens. We knew we had witnessed a rare thing. Lesser prairie chickens were once abundant in the vast grass prairie of the western U.S. But today they are a disappearing species. Even though millions of dollars are being spent to protect and help them prosper, it’s a tough fight with a short stick. Habitat is the key and much of that is disappearing.
Back at the ranch house Bill said, “I guess we didn’t get our grain out soon enough. I think we’ll jump 10 coveys tomorrow.” As I remembered the recent ice storms in the region I had my doubts.
The next day was disappointing. With 100 pounds of grain on the same roads that Bill and the ranch owner had jumped many coveys we saw only two. We did kill several birds and lost none of them to the thick grass. Lady found every bird.
Late in the afternoon we were driving along a fence row where we had jumped a covey that morning. We guessed that the birds had regrouped and should be near the fence. As the Jeep chugged slowly along Lady suddenly went bananas and leaped out of the vehicle. Knowing what was happening I grabbed my 20-gauge Remington and jumped out. By then Lady had her nose in the middle of the covey. I nailed one as they flushed and scattered around an oil well. We would have driven right past them but Lady wasn’t going to let that happen.
With so few birds we cut our trip a day short and headed home. I told quail man Robert Perez about how the birds in the area had disappeared. He shed some light on why for me.
“The western Panhandle got some rain in late summer and we got reports of some birds nesting and producing late broods.
“Those are probably some of the birds your brother shot in November.”
He went on to say that late hatches usually produce small broods and often they don’t have full adult plumage before cold weather comes. These late birds thus are very susceptible to cold and easily die of exposure.
“Quail are weak scratchers,” he said. “ìIf the ground stays frozen three days they die.”
Evidently, that’s what happened to our birds.
But the good news is these winter rains we’re getting now. After a bad year quail really step up their reproduction capabilities. If we get rains in the spring and summer, next season could be good.
Jim Darnell is an ordained minister and host/producer of the syndicated outdoors show God’s Great Outdoors. His column runs every Thursday in the Daily Record.
