Sharing information can be very beneficial on forum topice such as these.

I am sure it is challenging to manage the hunting trips and fields that get the most attention from hunters and dogs. Guys with all the time, mainly retired and guys like me who have spring and summer peak careers, will most definitley hunt more than the weekend guy and his neighbor. I guess each lease should have a certain amount of out of state hunters?

I agree with Tigger on the amount of dogs to amount of birds harvested. Just because joe hunter brings 10 dogs doesn't mean he shoots 10 times the quail, just means he spend 10 times the amount on dog food and vet bills, which is another topic.

Seriously, if the quail population was at a high level, and on the rise, we would not even be having this discussion. And us poor folks like me would not be hunting on leases that are priced at corporate rates. But it's not and the amount of birds we do have and the hunters that hunt them must be managed properly to secure the longevity of this most prized local sport.

Wow, it's a shame the gentleman's sport has come to this. So much money, so many rules...

+1!

Guys we have all bad experiences with leases and lease partners. This sport we love is on the decline. I have one rule on my lease, introduce someone to the sport each yr. Don't drive people out of the sport with too many rules that other people might feel are elitist. If a young person takes a shot at a bird on the ground, don't shut the hunt down. Show them the right way and make sure they enjoy the hunt. We need all the soilders we can get!

Are you saying you have no limits on quest. To some degree rules are only for the honest man. If we all used good judgment and tried to insure the our fellow lease members had as good of a time as we did we would not need any rules.

I've hunted quail in Texas for 42 years and been on around 15 leases. This is the first time I've ever heard of limiting the number of dogs. The guys with the most dogs usually kill the least quail.

Your hypothetical sounds a lot like our lease at Mergargel. It was 8,300 acres of 100% hunt pastures, with a camphouse. Jeff Horn put the package together, because he had hunted the lease in the past. They'd had 100 bird weekends. Anyone driving along county road 210 would have lusted over it. There were 8 members with guest privileges. Chuck and I joined together, but the rules allowed for 2 guest per member, but no more than 15 birds per member. We killed one bird. Jeff stuck onto the lease for a third year. It's a great place to run dogs, but...............

Another three years like the last three and the landowners can kiss most of the quail money goodbye. You can get a lot more dog work in NSTRA than you can get on a $5,000 lease. In the old days you kept the lease for killing birds, but I've killed more birds in NSTRA in the last 5 years, than I have on leases.

The same goes for hunting dog trainers, 20% of atv sales, 20% of the economy in small west texas towns will be history.

NSTRA and other artificial hunting games are just that. For those that do play the game I believe it is great and you get to see some wonderfully trained dogs, meet great guys. I have a johnny house and 900 wonderful acres to train and run dogs on but it is just not the same to me as wild bird hunting and watching good meat dogs work.

I know I'm repeating myself. I would also, rather hunt wild birds, but there just are no wild birds for me to hunt.

I started a couple of threads on here about my hunts in Wharton county. We're finding wild birds but not like in the years past. Here's an excerpt from a log I kept in 1992, about a hunt on that same pasture;


"January 12, 1992: This was a hunt I'll treasure forever. I went out this morning with ET, and SK. We hunted the Goat pasture near Wharton. It was wet and the water was standint in the low places. The quail were on the ridges.I don't know how many coveys we got up. My guess is 12 to 14. Some ridges had two or three coveys in a small area. All the coveys were pointed. Some were devided finds that we originally thought was a point and a back.

Sis made a little loop to hunt by herself.

Ginger pointed three coveys while Sis was gone. Her second was a covey that brought old memories of South Texas hunts during her prime. It's not classic, but the covey was running and she stayed with them. She knew what she was doing and we knew what she was doing. She had a perfact location when the birds stopped. She went on to point several more times including a dead bird that we had shot out of our first covey.

Ginger was always the least trouble of any dog i've ever owned. Cathy sneaked her in several times to sleep with her over the holidays. She was a lady.

We knocked down 37 birds and picked up 34 birds.

Ginger died in her kennel after the hunt."

I am just getting into quail hunting so from a newbies point of view, why would I spend so much money on a lease with so many rules and so few prospects? Is this what quail hunting In Texas has become?

Sounds like the glory days are behind us which is unfortunate. appears Those of us just getting started missed out on what I would say attracted me to the sport in the first place ( e.g. Experiencing what Bill describes above on a Large affordable lease.) Any chance that it could ever be like it was before?

As to the previous post of we need more soldiers, I agree with that wholeheartedly but it will be tough. I can remember 15 years in Archer City, Olney, Albany, Haskell -- those hotels would be full of dog boxes, probably half the guests. Now, its rare to see one umtil you get out in the sandy soil country. Right now, we are down two members in our group but I have a hard time wanting to take on new ones with the uncertainty of what we got. New comers dont understand the boom and bust cycles etc.

As far as limiting number of dogs, I have found in practice that if you are running a tightknit group of mostly friends that all hunt with each other, to bring in an outsider who is the only member that has a large armada of dogs causes issues based on the perception that hunter will be more successful. It also makes pairing up and hunting tougher because its tougher to swap off on dogs every other turn as well. If its a loosely coupled group of hunters that didnt know each other before, then its much less of an issue I would think (and probably impossible to impose that level of cherry picking of members)

tigger I guess I am lucky enough to have a good group that has hunted together for many yrs. We mainly just use common sense and try to make it fun for all involved.

I do not believe there is a person who would not like to see it like it was 20 years ago. In the 1980s I use to teach tax seminars for Texas A&m. I would load my 2 dogs in the truck and head to Abilene, San Angelo, Lubbock, Amarillo, Vernon, Wichita Falls, etc. At the seminar I would as if anyone had a place I could hunt for a day and that I did not mind paying a small day lease fee. In almost all areas I would be offered a place to hunt. In those days most of the area had very few deer and Georgia, Alabama etc still had quail. You almost never saw an out of state hunter. Today most of the remaining quail country in Texas also has Deer. Therefore the area holding huntable quail numbers are down and the quail hunters are competing with the deer hunters for the lease. If the quail range keeps getting smaller and smaller the cost of the lease will keep going up. If you go to a ranch management seminar today the talking heads will talk more about the recreational value of the ranch then the commodity production value. They spend a great deal of time talking about how to maxamize the hunting income stream. Ranches are being bought for no other purpose then provide recreation for the owners and friends. They can always find local to run a few cows. Our state government also contributes by allowing wildlife tax exemptions which cause those who cannot afford a ranch to have to pay more in taxes and make the ranch more affordable for the recreation owner. The bottom line is each year you have more dollars chasing less area. Therefore cost will continue to go up. With as bad as it has been this year cost might go down. I know a lot of deer and antelope outfitters have had to eat alot of hunts and if those acres become avaliable that could ease market pressure.

I am also lucky in that most of my core group has been together for 8 years. Most of the rules I posted come from the ranch owner and or there to help make it clear to new members.

Not a chance, You could never imagine what you missed out on,The reference to gentlemens? /everybodys/ sport becoming money an rules, true.In fiftys most bird hunters had 1-2 dogs.Put them in trunk, Get to throckmorton hotel play cards all nite. Get to Kirkendials(swenson),drop him off a case beer an 1/5 for weekend(fee).Start at clechi pits on Haskel hwy, Hunt fence burm 7 miles to truck ,unload birds,drop fresh dogs head back,1/2 to full tub of birds per day to clean.That lasted thru 68+- and popularity grew,deer #s increased, leasing,dog clubs started. Dallas trinity bottoms, hayed in good years 2-3 hrs start at mockingbird go south an circle back an find 15-20 coveys in ragweed on river bank an have 30 +. Then the bird drop began. down hill ever since.Ive found smaller place3- 500ac are better as you have ability to improve the numbers by working on area, and providing what it lacks in carrying capacity,Down side? leave all 4x4 transport home an walk it.Making the most of less and fewer people to deal with.Working with your dog is what its about,not 10 dogs,an 3000 acres aday.

I once had a lease on the coleman runnels county line. 1 section. I would hunt it on the way to a childress lease and on the way home from the childress lease. I had the place for 15 years and was leaseing from a friend. Some guy from mississippi lease the adjoining ranch and then offered my friend $10 per acres for his. That was 10 years ago.

Having a hunting ranch and watched the weather patterns over the past 5-6 years has opened my eyes pretty wide. Also having an outfitter that works our ranch has taught me a ton of conservation dos and don'ts. #1, you don't lease your land to anyone, least of all someone who has no foresight how to manage what coveys you have. I know this sounds pretty harsh and restrictive but there are hunters out there that don't know when to quit shooting. Coleman county and nearby surrounding counties are suffering from the effects of the drought. We have virtually no habitat and I'm as guilty as any when it comes to replenishing the natural grasses.

Now, heres another look from a different angle!! Our outfitter has in the past moved his bird hunting facilities mostly out West around Big Springs and Colorado City and other known hunting areas close by. To say the least, the numbers have dropped significantly there also because of hunting pressure. I know this is off the subject but "guests may have to take a back seat until, and IF, the region ever recovers from the effects of elements. It was great, like what has been refered to as 20 years ago, but the fragile quail are in danger and the #s are dropping.

Has it become a rich mans sport such as deer hunting and other hunting sports? Surley and rightfully so! Why? Because quail hunting is, if you please, is a gentlemans sport. Always has been and will continue to be as long as the birds survive. There is nothing to compare to hunting "wild" quail and being able to enjoy the fruits of your hunt with a plate of well deserved quail, hot biscuits and gravey and companionship with your fellow man and lastly, your best friend, your dog.

If outfitters are following the wild birds with their clients, then how would eliminating guests from paid leases positively impact the quail numbers?

Outfitters make money from putting their customers on successful hunts and the referrals/repeat business that comes from that. I'm not putting all outfitters in this category, but isn't it in the best interest of the outfitter to let their customers limit out on birds? Such practices are less likely to encourage population growth.

I would think that someone paying an annual quail lease would potentially have more influence over an invited guest thus having a better chance of positively impacting bird numbers.

as far as the gentlemans sport - when did driving the roads on a atv following dogs become the way to hunt. i turn down more people every yr wanting to drive around and hunt. quail numbers are getting lower but so are the real quail hunters.

I agree but the gentlemen use to ride in a mule drawn wagon so what is the difference.

Most of our bird dog's pedigrees go back to horseback field trial dogs. That was how the term gentleman's sport originated. People hunting from vehicles with unloaded guns will kill less quail than one person walking with a loaded gun. Try it with four people on the ground walking with a loaded gun. The 4 people on the vehicle will stay together, but the four people on the ground will eventually get seperated at times, thus increasing the probability of disturbing more coveys.

This reminds me of a little story. Chuck Duran and I hunted our lease at Millersview from my Gator. Another member got didn't like it and complained to the ranch foreman. He asked to stay on the roads with the Gator. We were at a NSTRA weekend trail, where I counted out 36 quai, and put them in a WM gracery bag. I stuck the bag in the freezer till the next weekend, when we went to the lease and walked. I threw all those dead birds in a basket on my Gator. I never kept any quail, but the guy who complained traded his quail for Dallas Cowboy's tickets. I offered him all my dead quail, and he took them.

A walker is a meat hunter, and a rider is a bird dog man, to me. I don't remember the last time I shot an un-pointed quail.

I should have clarified myself a little better, I agree with you. But mainly I was speaking of the number of hunters in the field at one given time.

We all live and learn. As a younger man when I first started hunting quail I thought the more birds you could get on the rise and then hunt the devil out of those singles was the way to hunt. Used to brag about how many quail we would kill on a given trip to our lease. What we were doing was hunting ourselves out of a place to hunt quail!! After about three seasons we would all stand around scratching our heads saying: "where did all the quail go"?

Isn'the normal life of a bobwhite quail about 10-11 months? I doubt that what was killed 2-3 years ago impacted your hunting in year 3.
When the season closed in year 87-88 @ Dilly texas they were as many birds on closing day as the first day. Could not tell much difference in #'s but the next 2 seasons they had declined to where one couldn't find but 4-5 coveys per day. Hunting pressure sure did not cause this decline.

Same thing happened at the end of the 2005 season. Ranch foreman told us they had large coveys of blues and bobs until mid march, then they seemed to disappear.

in alabama. never saw one up here.