[TN-Bird] too many quail, already ???
- From: "Wallace Coffey" <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 14:35:26 -0600
Carol Reese wrote:
>> you will read that the most serious
>> predator of adult quail is the Cooper's hawk. In fact, some articles
>> speculated that the laws protecting raptors were part of the problem with
>> diminishing quail populations. Owls were also a serious predator of adult
>> quail,
Since I spent about 15 years quail hunting and more years than that
studying raptors and was an outdoors editor for many years, I would
like to praise the Cooper's Hawks and owls for getting
their jobs done well. The Good Lord made the hawks and owls for
a purpose and that must be one of them. They are filling wonderful and
important niches every time a quail is eaten :-)
The only problem we have is that hunters (including myself
for a good many years) want to see the fields full of quail every
time we go out to prey upon the quail. We hunters never
worry about whether the Cooper's Hawk and owls are
eating too many meadowlarks or too many Whip-poor-wills :-)
If we could limit the Cooper's Hawks and owl to the number
that hunters would like, then hunters would become the major
predator problem and we would have to stop all hunting of quail
or take the protection off hunters so they wouldn't be limiting
the quail population. Then quail could be as abundant as their
habitat would allow --but you and I don't really want to get into all
that, do we?
With fields full of quail everywhere, then the house cat would be
the main problem and we'd have to have a hunting season on
house cats in order to reduce that population so it would not
become the major predator on qauil. (Yes, I agree, there are
good hunters and bad hunters out there and the bad guys
shoot every roaming cat and dog they see in the fields. Pssst.
Don't tell anyone but the wildlife officers "once' did that. Shhh.
Not everyone knows that.......Shhh.)
A recent research project learned that one significant problem
with the success of ground nesting birds is that White-tailed
Deer eat the eggs and young from bird's nests on the ground.
I wonder if the White-tailed Deer is a major preadator on the
nest and eggs of the quail ? Hmmmm. Surely not ;-(
Well, we have a hunting season to limit deer herds but that
isn't working either. The state deer herd is growing and
growing and growing. I live right in the heart of town and there
are more deer in my neighborhood (and wild turkey) than were
killed in all of Northeast Tennessee during hunting season 30
years ago. Now what do we do?
Soon our state wildlife agency will have everything in balance,
so to speak, and we will live happily ever after. But one thing
is for sure, the state is beginning to have a shortage of hunters
and the numbers of quail hunters in Tennessee has declined
to the point we will no longer need to worry about quail. Of
course the explanation is that there are not enough quail to
hunt. Maybe the reason the deer herd is growing so fast is
because we don't have enough deer hunters. The explanation use
to be that we didn't have enough deer because there were too
many dogs running wild. Something went wrong. There are
as many dogs running wild as ever but we still have many,
many deer. Too many ?
You know there is a rule in wildlife management: "we will
admit what we did wrong 20 years ago but don't admit
we are doing wrong now." That also is true for government
foresters and many other resource managers. Shhhh.
Thanks for fanning the flames of discussion. I think that TN-Birds
can be a good discussion site for birds as well as just a "who saw
what" bird net.
but Let's go birding....
Wallace Coffey
Bristol, TN
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TN-Bird Net Owner: Wallace Coffey, Bristol, TN
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