Can't buy right now tigger. How about leasing out the bird hunting rights.

I never had to pay till about 15 yrs. ago. There were plenty of birds here in Ellis county.
There is a group in western Navarro county that is trying to bring quail back to that area.

Gone to virginia for a week. Keep it lively. Quail hunting on the ocean front property in arizona is free to thf members.

I was gonna gather up some of my wealthy friends and offer $100/per bird. Will send you a check for $200 cause I am pretty sure we will only get 2 birds. You don't run cows on this place do you? Please don't cash my check till I make sure I get my 2 birds..................Have a safe trip my friend.

Will do

Alot of the rolling plains getting rain last night and today, With the snow and now a some rain it can't be all bad. Here's hopeing it continues, the forbes grow and next year is a better one for Mr. Bob. Going out Monday morning and the sceinting should be great.

OK, I'll gingerly dip my toe into this one too, since in a way I helped start it.

Most of us quail hunters would love to find a landowner that treats you right. We have found one in the last 12 years--the Matador Ranch. That was years ago, don't know how they are now. We did not kill too many birds, but we felt like they were considerate and sure as hell did not overgraze the *&&%$ out of the place. Had good grass and so on, nice folks, honest and straightforward. If they said they going to do "A", they did it. Our lease there coincided with the start of the coupla year long drought of several years ago and that really hammered the birds. No one blamed the ranch, they did their part. It was just too long a trip for us, over 8 hours.

AND, I do NOT have a problem with a quail lease being treated as a "business" by the rancher. But, what single characteristic defines a succesfull business? It is a MUTUALLY beneficial transaction. The buyer gets what he wants and the seller makes some money. If I go into a steak house and order a T bone steak and get served a sirlion I am not gonna be happy. The business and I had an agreement: I wanted a T bone but they gave me sirlion because it was cheaper or that is what they had or whatever.
Its exactly the same sort of transaction for a quail lease. I want to hunt quail, the landowner sez he has some, we come to an agreement. I pay him hard earned cash for quail hunting. Then the landowner comes through and cows down the place so no quail could possibly live there and I did NOT GET WHAT I PAID FOR. Not because of weather, but because of a willful act by the landowner who decided that he really did not give a damn about the mutually beneficial agreement; he was gonna run as many cows as he liked and if I did not like it too bad.
Bad business and no real business could get away with that and survive.

But the particular land owner in question sez too bad, its my land and there is nothing you can do about it and I'll get some more idiot quail hunters in next year and they will pay the exorbitant rates for my lease so who cares??

Sure there are good landowners, I named one. BUT, I could name a whole helluva lot more who were NOT. They only saw their side of the deal and cared not if their "business" decisions screwed their customer.

So, IMHO, its not REALLY like buying a season ticket for a football team and the team doesn't make the superbowl. At least you got to go to the games and unless the team was the Raiders, they won some games.Its more like buying a season ticket and the football team goes on strike for the season.

YMMV,

Well it's like everything else in life some like it some don't, I leased from the Matador ranch for three years and the good one was 2005. The next year you couldn't find a blade of grass on the lease. The following year no grass and I'll always believe because of that we had a unbelieveable crop of broomweed. It was unhuntable. And the next they went into deer full time and really cut back on the amount of land they leased for quail. Didn't matter to me cause I was gone.

I guess my point is when the quail are there everything is fine, when their not it's a problem. Whose fault it is can be argued, and finding a lease you can count on is a tough proposition. I've got one now that I watched for a year and am glad I got in on it. The manager shoots straight with you and the rancher seems up front. It's a crap shoot for us all.

http://www.srcc.lsu.edu/stations/index.php?action=metadata&network_station_id=418566

Here is a site that allows you to follow daily mosture amounts at or near your lease. Great tool and an excellent forcaster of quail on your place.

Quailguy it sounds like you got ripped off and I feel your frustration. If I were in your your shoes I would do what you seem to be doing, I would move on. My response was to tiggers scenrio. With a landowner like yours even if you were to secure some type of a refund, he would hammer you when the quail crop was good. We have been w/ the same group for 19 yrs. In that time we have had some bad yrs. and more than once we have been offered a refund. We have always refused it because our rancher is a good stewart of the land. Always considers the quail habitat and is somewhat open to any suggestions we have. We have GENTLY made a couple in 19 yrs.It works out good for him and for us. This yr. we have limited ourselves to a couple birds per covey and mostly dog work. We pushed 11 coveys on this land Sat. There are still a few good ranchers out there.

my issue is from my limited experience with leases ( always hunted public land until moving here in 05 ) is when i start doing my homework before i even begin to drive 1000 miles round trip to look at the lease is i cant get an honest answer about how the quail numbers currently look from the landowner. of course this depends what time of the year i am calling about it
but it had been in october a couple of times which is plenty of time to know what is happening currently. paticularly if the landowner is spending time on the land or has feedback from people working for him on an everyday basis. his answer is that the numbers are above average or he doesnt know. in either case like this year was my first yeaer on this lease was a bomb. i was told that it was at a 5 year high in october. i called some other hunters currently on the lease for the last 10 years about years past and all was great. i did not make the drive out to look though . does that mean all the B.S. the landowner told me is now unaccountable ? i dont think so in my opinion. on the other side how can a landowner not know? he is selling a service the way i see it and he doesnt know about it? more B.S.

so my answer is to refund all of the money based on these 2 answers i seem to get from the landowner to a first year hunter . if you can show me another business deal in that the customer is buying a good or service and is lied to or witheld information i want to know about it if there still in business

I voted zero percent. Property taxes don't go away when it doesn't rain (would be cool if they did though).

Do your research and hope for the best. If the birds go away then bail. If enough people bail lease prices will fall. Just look at quail lease prices in East Texas. The drop in hunting pressure will probably help the bird population too. Quail hunting is more about economics than anything else.

If you want consistent, good bobwhite quail hunting in Texas go buy property and manage it. If you don't have a spare 10 million bucks then go hunt public land states with lots of BLM and forest land...there are plenty of good bird hunting opportunities that can be had for free if you are willing to either travel or move.

"Buyer beware" is my opinion! There are no guarantees in hunting of any kind. You go to Vegas knowing your going to spend money and you are mainly there for the experience not knowing you will win any money. I am on a lease in Shackelford Co.(premium location) and it is tough to sell slots for quail hunting because there are very few birds if any. Hunters know this as well as the ranchers. The hunter has the choice to not be on the lease for what ever his reason may be. But, I'll bet there are more city people who WILL pay for access on a premier ranch regardless of the amount of game it carries than not.

Complain all you want. There will always be somebody who will be willing to take the spot. Asking for less money or a refund is ludicrous. I didn't shoot a trophy deer on my trophy deer lease. Should I get my mone back? I didn't catch the biggest tuna on my long range trip. Should I get my money back? If I go on a tropical vacation and it rains the whole time, should I get a refund?

you not shooting a trophy deer: No
Catching the biggest Tuna: No
What would someone except on a TROPICAL vacation? No

So its about size that of the animal? Or in quails case, the number of birds shot?

If someone pays thousands and there are not any birds on the land, I guess thats their own fault for not checking.

IMO yes. If you're going to fork over a good chunk of change, I suggest you do your research first. Paying for a lease is paying for the oppurtunity to go shoot some birds. If you do your research and find a place that has the greatest chance of shooting your birds then great. But just to expect a thriving quail population in poor conditions because you paid for it just doesn't make sense.

If a person is not shooting birds on their lease, and they are complaining about it, then it is about the number of birds shot. I don't think we would be having this conversation if they were getting their birds.

I know at least a half a dozen people who are not willing to, "take the spot."

Even with the half dozen that won't, there are a dozen that will.

Everyone might as well forget about the good old days, they are gone. We will never see 29 cent gas with gas wars dropping it to 19 cents, a good new pickup will never cost $1995. But I personally like it the way it is, to many comforts today to want to go back to the good old days.

Good question, 99.9% would not offer up any more for the landowner.

This is a crock!!! Either you or I will have to eat these words in a few years. Frankly, I hope it's me. The best quial hunting in the world was in the shoutheast until a couple of decades ago. I've read stories about bird dogs tied up in every front yard. They're all gone. Look at the people from the SE who come to Texas to hunt.

I think Texas is headed in that direction. I have my last bird dog, because of my age. There will be no one to take my place.

I'm not looking for a lease with the current numbers. I can keep one dog for NSTRA, and Johnny house quail.

And I know the other two dozen that would be willing to pay twice the amount. There are always people who have more money and could care less how it is spent. Same with deer leases. Look how many people are looking for a new deer lease now, the Lease section is full of them. I could jack up the price of the deer lease I'm on and have no problem filling it, because there is always somebody with the money.

If I wanted to lease our place I could put an ad in the lease section and have a dozen inquiries in no time. There will always be people willing to pay whatever the going rate is to lease a place. Even now after all of the drought and everything else we still have some quail left because we keep the milo feeders and water troughs going for them. Not like a few years ago, but at least we still have enough that I generally see a covey or 2 every time I go to check on the place. But it is not now or ever in my lifetime going to be leased.

I have heard that Wayne Pearson had moved into the Matador and turned it into a trophy mule deer hunting deal.