Right after opening the gate, I walked the electric fences to double-check that the deer hadn't knocked them down and almost immediately jumped the biggest covey of quail (20-25 birds) that I've seen in a very long time. I was thinking that quail might be attracted to this sort of winter cover, but it's nice to have my thinking confirmed by actually seeing that many on a cold, snowy day.
If I added some sunflowers, buckwheat, or cowpeas to the sorghum-sudangrass, I wonder how many more quail I could raise? A bird dog would be next to impossible to see in that tall grass, but it would be a heck of a hunt if I had a hundred acres of sorghum-sudangrass full of quail and a good bird dog.
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| Before the cattle have started grazing |
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| Rabbit tracks running all over the place |
Back when we had quail, I usually found them hunkered down under cedar trees in short canary grass. In tall stuff like what you have, we always found the pheasants. But a few hard winters in a row put the kabosh on the quail population and I haven't seen one in about 25 years. Its a shame because I remember them as good eating.
ReplyDeleteI don't rabbit hunt but there are a group of doctors that come down several times a year to hunt rabbits on my dad's farm with beagles. They've been hunting the same 160 acres since I was just a boy and as far as I know, they've always gotten their limit. It is about 3/4 of a mile from the home far as a crow flies and I love hearing those beagles go to town on those rabbits. It is nothing but constant shooting and dogs barking until they get their limit.
I saw something about improving quail habitat one time that suggested running a disc over pastures to encourage the growth of ragweed which apparently is a quail super-food. It sounded to me like controlling each and every weed in pastures and cropland might be why the quail populations have dropped. I never worried excessively about weeds in my pastures, but after that I just tell people that little patches of weeds are my quail food plots. But, I still don't like weeds in my cropland if I can help it.
DeleteThis fall, I kept hearing pheasants cackling about half a mile away on a neighbors sorghum field and I've been hoping that they'd show up in my fields. I usually see a few each year, but I haven't seen any at all this year.
There's no pheasant hunting season here, but the pheasant hunting area is only about 4 miles away, so there's always a possibility that there might be a pheasant hunting season here in the future. That's one reason I'll keep planting grain sorghum and sorghum-sudangrass.