East Texas quail, when and where did you last see any?

[deerwatcher51]

I know that it is not East Texas (it starts at the Brazos) and I did not see them but my wife’s nephew sent me a picture of a pair that he saw last year at Washington on the Brazos.

[AJMag]

Ran up on a few at my lease in coldspring last year. Had no idea we had any prior to that

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[AgHntr10]

The closest I have seen any to East Texas was a covey that lived under a cattle guard going into a duck lease in Lissie. That was about 12-13 years ago.

[Nova]

Many of the causes have been listed, but a huge one in East Texas is Loblolly pine plantations. Native shortleaf/longleaf pine has been timbered off and replanted with Loblolly pine which changes those forests from ideal quail habitat to ideal mesopredator habitat. Mesopredators (middle size predators like raccoons) are very efficient nest predators of ground nesting birds).

National Forests and national preserves have more native habitats than most private land and that is why those places still have some quail.

I did have access to a place in the late 90's to early 00's that had three or four coveys on a half section in SE Texas, but I'm not sure there are any still around. They didn't get hunted.

I'd rank the hierarchy of quail loss in East Texas in tiers:

Tier one: Habitat loss (includes improved pasture replacing native grasses, loblolly plantations pine replacing virgin shortleaf/longleaf pine with fire driven ecosystems, development, other timber practices like clear cutting, and the lack of fire on the landscape)
Tier two: Nest robbing predators/low fur prices. Raccoons, skumks, possums, snakes, and, hog populations are all booming. Tier one contributes to tier two.
Tier three: fire ants/pesticides/herbicide use. Quail chicks diet is something like 75% insects/25% plant matter.
Tier four: Raptors.
Tier five: Grazing practices.

Turkeys face the same problems as above. The big difference is that Turkeys that survive to adulthood have many fewer predators than quail at adulthood. They are also individually just hardier birds.

There is an East Texas Wild Quail Restoration Facebook group that has some interesting articles and info from time to time.

As far as the tiers go, unfortunately, unless restoration begins with tier one (the most costly, difficult, and slowest tier to recover), mitigating the other tiers isn't very effective without habitat restoration. Loblolly/Longleaf pines take a very long time to reach maturity (200 years is what I remember, but my memory can be wrong). Converting improved pasture back to native pasture is a much shorter time period, but it is still measured in years and requires vigilant maintenance once accomplished. Prescribed burns to encourage edge habitat, successional forest, and forb growth is the easiest to implement and is probably step one for all of the tier one issues.

As far as TPWD, there is research going on with wild capture and relocation of bobwhite and blue quail right now at the Rolling Plains Quail Research Station. I think that research could yield results that can jumpstart restoration in areas with the appropriate habitat or where habitat restoration has begun.

Texas A&M has also worked with some landowners to try to establish populations of California Quail. My opinion is that we should have learned our lesson by now that moving species around to replace native species always has unintended consequences and is generally a bad idea. I think TPWD's focus should be on landowner education and habitat restoration. But, long term projects that cost alot and are unlikely to yield results are really hard to sell.

Turkey restoration nationally jumpstarted when they finally figured out that pen raised birds don't work for restoration purposes. Turkeys also had a very effective national advocacy organization in NWTF that helped tremendously with funds, advocacy, and interagency cooperation.

Quail don't have an effective national advocacy organization like NWTF. There is Quail Forever and they do good work, but they don't have the reach or scope that NWTF have. I think this is partially because quail hunting is largely a rich man's sport now and that we are a couple of generations past when it was common for ordinary working class rural folks in East Texas (or anywhere in that ecosystem that stretches from East Texas to Georgia) to keep a couple of bird dogs and hunt quail. While rich folks can fund intiatives, it takes broad based popular support to really get things done.

One positive to habitat restoration for quail is that it would be very beneficial to both turkeys and whitetail, so there is some hope that we could coattail these two very popular species towards restoring habitat that quail can thrive in.

You got close but in general you are right

[El General]

You got close but in general you are right

That is closer than I usually am.

[locolobo]

Down here in SE TX I used to hear and occasionally see quail in the field behind my place. Been 25+ yrs. since I've heard 'em though.