Texas Hunting Forum: Best cover for quail

Since quail has been the mainstream ingredient and our bread and butter for hunting on our ranch I'll try to fill in just a few of the needed ingredients.

The terrain surrounding our place consists of rolling hills and elm and cedar motts, catclaw, and of course the ever present mesquite and oaks of various nature.

One of the habitats of the fragile quail, eventhough when harsh weather conditions are present they seem to be very hardy, is prickly pear of which they, the quail and chicks can be activly fed from! Prickly pear also protects from the predator that hovers over them during the daylight hours.

In rebuttal to the old belief that the chick has to have a drop of water each day is a myth. In fact the chicks and adults can recieve ample water from the food they ingest. Now, to further inhance their survival it takes about five natural seeds of which not all areas support all five seeds.

Switch grass and blue stem are main ingredients to sustaining the birds. Also to have a healthy clutch you need to know how many cattle to run on a given place so that the grasses will be thinned out for the quail to navigate in and easily escape predators. Heres a little piece of info I copied and pasted for your information. Hope this helped, Benny

As an open country bird species, quail have the ability to range all over North America. They are able to adapt to a vast array of climates, from Canada to the gulf coast and from the east coast to Colorado. Unfortunately, quail populations have drastically declined over the last 30 years due to a lack of habitat. Quail need grasslands, bare ground, seed-producing plants and shrubs for nesting, food and cover. Urban sprawl and an increase in intensified agriculture have resulting in the largest decrease of quail habitat. Quail Forever concentrates its habitat project efforts on fulfilling the biological needs of the bobwhite, as well as on the preservation of permanent areas for other wildlife.

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Benny

T X Ranch