Now that the season is over....

and we can all take a deep breath and look back at this last hunting season. Lets see if we can get a comparison of what the previous two seasons looked like.If you were on the same lease the last 2-3 years we may get a better comparison. If not we can still get some comparisons.And I will start. Three years ago maybe 6-7 coveys on 7500 acres with 6-10 birds per covey. Last year maybe 10 coveys with 15-25 bird per covey. This year we added another 3000 acres that that really didn't improve our bird count and I am going to say our covey count increased 4 fold with bird counts from 15 to 20 bird coveys. We had plenty of food average rainfall. Needless to say I am excited and hope rains come at the right time this year and all the stars line up right. Visited with a trialer yesterday from North Central Kansas that said they have had very few birds the last two years but this year they were everywhere. I asked what had changed and he said nothing same amount of rain and everything else. He asked a game biologist and he said they didn't
understand it either.

I believe covey count doubled over last year with an increase in size of coveys but would say on a historical basis I would call it a 2 at best. Talking about shinnery country in the rolling plains. Removing the last 3 years and including the previous 15 I averaged 3 coveys an hour. This year would be about .8 per hr. reason for about is I hunted so little and had so few decent days that I did hunt I would not put much faith in my figures.

Our numbers got a little better this past season. We had enough birds to count on getting bird work for all the pups.

I did notice the covey sizes were a little larger than last year.
A couple of pastures that I don't hunt had 2 or 3 large coveys, where in the past you might have seen 5 or 6 birds total.

Numbers were up slightly this year in South Texas and about the same(miserable) around Sweetwater for me. A good spring rain would sure benefit everyone and the quail population.

We hunt in southern Oklahoma, we had more coveys & bigger coveys than we have had in the past 3-4 years.

This is the first year since 1990 that I didnt have season leased property. The day hunts I did this year vs. last year on the rolling plains had much larger sized coveys, and maybe an increase of 25% of number of coveys year over year. My group of buddies I hunt with have fewer good dogs in their prime, so thats a factor as well. Looking back to 2005 timeframe, we had 5 guys that all had one or two top flight bird finders, some trips this year we had to rotate 3 dogs for a 2 or 3 day hunt which I havent had to do in 15 years. Cant say I blame my buddies from not getting another pup when an older dog passes with current state of quail pops.

Our pastures are close enough so we can continue to works our dogs until they start pairing.

We hunted from the red river to just north of the rio grande. Bigger and more coveys everywhere we hunted including some 20 bird coveys in areas of the northern rolling plains that were just downright barren of birds the yrs before. Our best day was an 18 covey full day hunt . Finally got some kids to experience what all the fuss was about. Excited to see what next yr brings.....