So maybe there's quail there, maybe not. They try to fake you out.
Not the quail, but the researchers. Vicki Truitt and Elsa Gallagher are 30 yards apart, antennae pointed roughly at a spot somewhere in front and between them. Not that the two women have antennae--they aren't refugees from the old Killer Bees skits. They are wearing earphones and carrying something that looks as if it should receive Channel Nine Action News.
Instead, they could be zeroed in on a covey of quail at the Missouri Department of Conservation's Blind Pony Wildlife Area near Sweet Springs...or they could be faking it.
They know if quail, equipped with tiny transmitters the size of a quarter, are nestled in the foxtail or not, but the idea is to see if your treasured bird dogs can find them if they are there. And if they had quail pinpointed every time they aimed their antennae, us poor volunteers with the slobbering bird dogs could direct our misdirected mutts right to the spot.
Even the biologists, Tom Dailey and John Schulz, don't know if the telemetry team is faking or not. It's all part of a multi-year study to find out more about Missouri's favorite game bird than anyone ever has known before.
Quail are Missouri's preeminent game bird. But recent seasons have been only so-so (and the 1995-96 season was lousy for most hunters).
Weather has been a factor. Wet springs in 1993 and 1995 certainly affected nesting. Habitat continues to decline as the small family farms become big, often corporate, operations with clean fencerows and fall-plowed fields.
Fescue, a wildlife abomination, now comprises most of Missouri's pastureland (in the 1940s it was essentially absent and most Missouri hay and pasture land was in legumes, good for quail).
Maybe there are other factors, but quail hunting simply isn't as good as it was in the glory days of the late 1960s (when there were about three times as many quail hunters).
The implications of the study, which winds up this year are as important for hunters as they are for quail managers. Where do quail roost? And when? And why?
How many quail do hunters take out of what's available? How many do predators take. When? And why? The transmitter/receivers even are focusing on sidelights, such as how do quail respond to the presence of a dog.
The questions are endless...and so are the transects, if you happen to be walking them. Six or seven miles of hiking daily isn't unusual.
Blind Pony Lake bisects the wildlife area. The east side was open to statewide hunting regulations, while the west side was restricted--hunting by drawing only and a short season.
Hunters took far fewer birds on the west side and more quail survived the winter...but by nesting time, the populations were roughly equal on both sides of the lake.
Dailey was surprised by how many birds hunters took under statewide regulations: more than 70 percent the first year of the study and more than 80 percent the second.
Quail managers have maintained for years that hunting is "compensatory," not "additive." In simpler terms, if hunters don't get a quail, something else will.
One study doesn't prove the theory, but it's a strong indicator that hunting doesn't add to the perils a quail faces--it just substitutes for something else.
Yet another discovery: people may think they invented house-husbands, but quail have been doing it forever. Thanks to the transmitters, Dailey has found that male quail incubate eggs about 25 percent of the time.
"Quail are quite promiscuous," he says. "We always thought that they were monogamous, that a hen and cock got together and raised a brood, but we've found that a hen will lay a clutch of eggs, then go off to find another male while the first male takes over incubation."
That's one reason a low quail population can rebound so quickly (something that Missouri quail hunters hope will happen in 1996-97).
The study involved not only professionals, but volunteers with bird dogs that range from so-so (someone else's dogs) to wonderful (your dogs) walk random lines, each marked with coded, colored flags. The lines were laid out first on an aerial photo, then on the ground by compass.
You let the dogs range pretty much at will, but generally back and forth across the transect line. The radio telemetry team (Vicki and Elsa) can find transmittered birds easily, but dogs don't have built-in receivers. Just their noses.
Dogs average finding about 50 percent of the available potential. "Average" implies that some dogs couldn't find quail stapled to the ends of their noses, while others pretty well sweep the place clean.
Schulz and Dailey measure humidity, wind speed, a flock of variables, all of which will go into a computer and spit out information on how well bird dogs do under given weather conditions (and where birds are likely to be under the same conditions).
The potential is almost endless. If you know where quail go in, let's say, terrible weather, it's an indication of what to plant to give quail food and shelter in terrible weather (and also where to hunt).
Blind Pony manager Jerry Hamilton, a fisheries man by profession, a quail hunter by inclination, has turned the 2,200-acre wildlife area into a quail hunter's delight.
The 1995-96 season was poor, but not because of habitat lack. Nasty spring weather crippled the quail hatch and the result was a population far below what it had been previously.
Hamilton tries to work over a third of the area every year, de-sprouting old fields, planting lespedeza, maintaining warm-season grass plots, cropping, planting food plots--if it's good for quail, you'll find it at Blind Pony.
Missouri's three-year study is supposed to be duplicated in six states, but money and other problems have interfered.
Copyright (c) 1996 Joel M. Vance. All rights reserved.
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