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Speaker 1: Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife,

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Speaker 1: wild places and the people who dedicate their lives to

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Speaker 1: conserving both. On this episode, I want to tell you

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Speaker 1: about Bob white quail, a bird that once covered the

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Speaker 1: entire North American continent in abundance, and the hunting culture

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Speaker 1: centered completely around them that now has almost been completely forgotten.

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Speaker 1: It's late January. I'm in North Mississippi, and the sound

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Speaker 1: that you're hearing is me hiking through the woods. I've

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Speaker 1: been at this all day with a new friend of

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Speaker 1: mine and his dog. We're out hunting, but we're not

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Speaker 1: here hunting deer. We're not here hunting ducks. We're not

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Speaker 1: even here hunting squirrels. In fact, the few other hunters

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Speaker 1: that we've crossed paths with today gave us odd looks

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Speaker 1: when we told them what we were here after.

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Speaker 2: What's the most cubes you found in today? You said, too,

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Speaker 2: And both of them pretty sizeable cubies.

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Speaker 1: You said, yeah, yeah, there's two covees in here.

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Speaker 3: According to when I came in September.

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Speaker 4: One was falling away that way here.

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Speaker 2: I'm quite surprised we didn't push them because they usually well,

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Speaker 2: we'll make a circle and come in the window.

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Speaker 4: Be in our favor.

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Speaker 5: Come.

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Speaker 1: What we're hunting is bob white quail, an animal that

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Speaker 1: is called this place, this state, this continent home since

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Speaker 1: before any of us were alive on this earth. But

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Speaker 1: unfortunately these days can be tough to find. Our mission

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Speaker 1: today is simple, find wild quail. We're in an area

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Speaker 1: where there still remains a huntable population. We hiked onward,

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Speaker 1: following the dog through every thorn, bramble and cane thicket

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Speaker 1: that she could find, until eventually she went on point,

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Speaker 1: letting us know she had found a bird.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Burdon, what.

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Speaker 1: You're hearing now is us making a game plan as

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Speaker 1: to how to approach the dog on point and flush

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Speaker 1: the bird. This can be extremely tricky putting ourselves in

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Speaker 1: position for a good shot, given the type of thickets

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Speaker 1: these birds call home. This next part, flushing the bird,

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Speaker 1: is almost unbearably suspensable. You don't know where it's gonna happen,

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Speaker 1: you don't know when it's gonna happen. You just walk

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Speaker 1: towards the dog, waiting for the forest floor to erupt

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Speaker 1: under your feet, and you better be ready.

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Speaker 2: Wow, that's my fault. That was more mesmerized with the

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Speaker 2: bird than anything. I think.

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Speaker 1: Wow, I stood there, motionless in awe of what I

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Speaker 1: had just seen. A single quail exploded out of that

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Speaker 1: sea of thorny vines, flew right over the top of

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Speaker 1: my head, and disappeared back into the brush so quickly

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Speaker 1: that the whole insie that became a memory quicker than

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Speaker 1: I could even process the fact that I had missed.

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Speaker 1: We both missed, and frankly, I don't think either of

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Speaker 1: us cared. But here's the big picture of all this.

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Speaker 1: Like I mentioned earlier, Bob white quail or native here.

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Speaker 1: They've called this entire continent home for a long time.

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Speaker 1: There's research that even has them on the landscape up

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Speaker 1: to a million years ago. That means that Bob white

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Speaker 1: quail were flying in Whistling the same time that Willie

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Speaker 1: mammoths and ground slots were still roaming around. That is

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Speaker 1: wild to me. And at one point, not too long ago,

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Speaker 1: there was so many that we had an entire hunting

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Speaker 1: culture built around them, and now in twenty twenty five,

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Speaker 1: they've been reduced to a fraction of what once was.

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Speaker 1: And I'm on a mission to find out why. The

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Speaker 1: guy that's going to help us do that as someone

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Speaker 1: you probably already know. His name is Will Primos, and

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Speaker 1: he's been a dear friend and mentor for me for

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Speaker 1: well over a decade. You and I both know Will

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Speaker 1: for spring turkey hunting, elk white tails, but I never

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Speaker 1: knew he got his start hunting with Bob white quail.

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Speaker 1: I'm sitting in Will's office. The room is filled with

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Speaker 1: countless celebrations of the outdoors, antler's hand carved duck decoys,

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Speaker 1: paintings of wild turkeys, countless books. And I've had the

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Speaker 1: pleasure of knowing Will for a long time. But I

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Speaker 1: couldn't help but notice his enthusiasm today. I think he's

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Speaker 1: excited to share this story.

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Speaker 6: My uncle Gus was a devoted quail hunter. He had

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Speaker 6: pointers and shutters, and I can still remember the setter.

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Speaker 6: Her name was Cheyenne, and I got paid a quarter

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Speaker 6: for school get up, and he lived like a real

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Speaker 6: third of a mile away.

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Speaker 4: You know, it wasn't very far, but I could get

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Speaker 4: there on my bicycle.

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Speaker 6: No, I would go over there, run over there and

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Speaker 6: for a quorder. I got the cleaning dog pins and

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Speaker 6: that started probably when I was about eight years old.

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Speaker 1: Will's connection the quail and bird dogs started and he

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Speaker 1: was just a boy in rural Mississippi in the nineteen fifties.

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Speaker 1: Little did he know that this would start a fire

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Speaker 1: that would burn for a lifetime.

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Speaker 3: Here's more from Will about his uncle Gus.

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Speaker 6: But his friend was Buck Deerman, and Buck Buck came

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Speaker 6: a fast friend of mine. As I grew over, Buck

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Speaker 6: and Gus would go quail hunting.

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Speaker 4: And Madison County.

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Speaker 6: Which is where we are right now, where I live,

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Speaker 6: back then was a rural setting. Used to be big,

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Speaker 6: huge cotton plantations, rolling cotton plantations. And back then what

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Speaker 6: they did the crime was very fertile that had never

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Speaker 6: been farm or anything.

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Speaker 3: They clear it.

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Speaker 6: They'd plant their crops, and when they depleted the nourishment

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Speaker 6: of the soul.

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Speaker 4: They didn't have furlizer stuff.

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Speaker 6: They just go clear another patch of land and that

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Speaker 6: other would grow up. And over the many, many decades

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Speaker 6: and years, Madison County became small rural farm vegetable gardens

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Speaker 6: and people who wanted to live in the country.

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Speaker 4: Is everywhere, no posted signs.

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Speaker 6: You just pulled up gut out of your car and

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Speaker 6: it was just perfect quail habitat.

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Speaker 4: I didn't know that at the time, I just thought

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Speaker 4: that was normal.

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Speaker 1: What Will just told us there is one of the

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Speaker 1: most important parts of this entire story. It's really not

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Speaker 1: even about quail. It's quail habitat. Remember that because that

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Speaker 1: detail is going to become more relevant later on.

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Speaker 6: But Buck was very long legged, and Gus was almost

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Speaker 6: as long legged. And here this little kid is and

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Speaker 6: just trying to keep up with them. But to see

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Speaker 6: the dogs work, and they wouldn't let me carry a

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Speaker 6: gun in those early years, but I got to be

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Speaker 6: there and watch the dog's point, watch them shoot, and

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Speaker 6: both of them shot browning automatics, you know, the old

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Speaker 6: Belgian may Old hump back, you know.

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Speaker 4: Anyway, my uncle Gust died a few years ago, but I.

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Speaker 6: Remember in his home he had a beautiful den where

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Speaker 6: he would entertain. He was a big business man. He

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Speaker 6: had entertained and he had a portrait commission to portrait

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Speaker 6: to be made of him kneeling down with his shotgun

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Speaker 6: with cheyenne.

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Speaker 1: I got a chance to see this painting, and frankly,

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Speaker 1: it's incredible. A square jawed man with black hair wearing

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Speaker 1: a khaki jacket knelt down with his bird dogs. And

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Speaker 1: I couldn't help but notice how much of a resemblance

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Speaker 1: it had to Will.

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Speaker 3: I think this gives.

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Speaker 1: Us a really clear picture into how important and valued

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Speaker 1: quail and quail hunting was at the time.

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Speaker 3: I mean, think about it.

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Speaker 1: How many people do you know these days that commission

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Speaker 1: a painter to do a portrait of their duck, dog

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Speaker 1: or a deer that they shot. Bob White quail meant

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Speaker 1: something to these people. But what really sticks out to

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Speaker 1: me is the background of this painting. It looks nothing

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Speaker 1: like what Madison County, Mississippi looks like today.

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Speaker 4: Today.

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Speaker 1: It's neighborhoods, business parks, pine plantations. Whether he meant to

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Speaker 1: or not, Will showing us this painting gave us one

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Speaker 1: of the most crucial pieces to this quail puzzle, its habitat.

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Speaker 1: I now want to hear from a biologist to give

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Speaker 1: us more on this quail story. Mark McConnell is an

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Speaker 1: upland bird professor at Mississippi State University. He starts off

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Speaker 1: by talking about Tall Timbers. FYI, this is one of

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Speaker 1: the nation's largest quail research centers located in South Georgia.

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Speaker 7: Some of the early research I know you know about

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Speaker 7: Tall Timbers Research Station, Well, that research station was started

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Speaker 7: as a response to quail decline even in that part

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Speaker 7: of the world.

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Speaker 3: Right that book right.

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Speaker 7: There on my desk, right next to you, that's considered

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Speaker 7: like the quail Bible. It was like the first really

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Speaker 7: robust study of Bob White. They started that study. They

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Speaker 7: published in nineteen thirty one, but they started it, you know,

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Speaker 7: several years before.

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Speaker 1: That nineteen thirty one, so they were already seeing declines

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Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty one.

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Speaker 3: They were seeing declines in the late eighteen nineties.

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Speaker 4: Oh wow, I did not know that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 7: You hear a lot of people say, oh, they've been

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Speaker 7: declined since the sixties. The longason we say that is

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Speaker 7: because the Breeding Bird Survey started in nineteen sixty six,

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Speaker 7: So that's the first documented decline.

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Speaker 1: The eighteen nineties. Will was just telling us these incredible

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Speaker 1: quail hunting stories from Mississippi in the nineteen fifties. Now

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Speaker 1: Mark's telling us the decline started sixty years earlier than that.

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Speaker 4: I can't keep up.

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Speaker 1: I want to ask Mark about quail declines in densities.

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Speaker 7: And there's a fair amount of reasons for that. If

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Speaker 7: you think about what was going on in the country

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Speaker 7: and kind of some of the industrial nature of things.

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Speaker 7: Herbert Stoddard said at the time that he thought a

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Speaker 7: bird per acre was as good as you could ever get,

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Speaker 7: and then they found out through time and tall timbers

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Speaker 7: is a great example of this. You absolutely can get

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Speaker 7: more than a bird breaker. There are there are places

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Speaker 7: in the Red Hills that can hit a bird and

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Speaker 7: a half two birds breaker. Now you don't stay there forever.

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Speaker 7: You know, populations nothing goes up forever, right, but you

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Speaker 7: can absolutely exceed that density to barying degrees. People would

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Speaker 7: wet their pants over bird p Yeah, Mississippi. So kind

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Speaker 7: of the story of Quail. If he started with thirty

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Speaker 7: thousand foot view, the entire landscape change everything we did.

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Speaker 7: The landscape, with very few exceptions, wasn't designed to mess

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Speaker 7: up Quail, but it certainly messed up Quail. Think about, say,

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Speaker 7: let's go eighteen ninety nineteen hundred somewhere in that pre

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Speaker 7: World War One, think about what the landscape would have

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Speaker 7: looked like. We did not have the Green Revolution of agriculture. Yet,

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Speaker 7: we didn't have fescue yet. Oh the tall fescue. It's

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Speaker 7: an exotic forage grass that we brought over to stabilize

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Speaker 7: soil and it's a great winter forage because it's a

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Speaker 7: cool season grass. It's a very challenging plant for quail management.

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Speaker 7: So we know it was before Bermuda grass, it was

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Speaker 7: before behaya grass. It was before all these exotic forage

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Speaker 7: grasses took over grazing and forage production. It was before

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Speaker 7: we were farming loblolly pine trees like road crops. That's

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Speaker 7: about the time we kind of the national US policy

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Speaker 7: was pretty much anti fire.

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Speaker 3: Fire was a bad thing, right.

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Speaker 7: So you've got industrialization, you've got expansion, you've got all

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Speaker 7: these things happening over the next several years, and it

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Speaker 7: just it all kind of just came together and congealed

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Speaker 7: to just create a landscape where quail could not exist

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Speaker 7: at high densities.

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Speaker 1: That's one thing that it's interesting as I've done some

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Speaker 1: of this digging and some of this research, is I'm

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Speaker 1: thirty two years old. You take someone a little bit

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Speaker 1: younger than me that grew up and let's just say

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Speaker 1: Mississippi because is where we're at, but this could be

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Speaker 1: applied to a lot of much of the Southeast. You

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Speaker 1: take someone that's just a little bit younger than me,

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Speaker 1: then a state of Mississippi that is virtually completely dominated

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Speaker 1: by law Volley pine plantation lines. And to them, that's normal,

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Speaker 1: that's Mississippi, that's our forest composition, that's what the state

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Speaker 1: looks like. And what's wild is you really don't have

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Speaker 1: to go that far back before it was wildly different.

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Speaker 1: It's clear that the landscape changed in the United States

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Speaker 1: dramatically in the nineteen hundreds, but why.

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Speaker 7: You had the dust Bowl era and then you had

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Speaker 7: all these conservation type approaches, but most of them were planning,

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Speaker 7: you know, exotic grass to stabilize the soil, which you know,

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Speaker 7: had a kind of initial Ooh, there's grass.

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Speaker 3: Then I was like, oh god, it's bad grass, and.

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Speaker 7: We kind of regretted it. And then right as you're

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Speaker 7: ramping up in the sixties at the Green Revolution, we

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Speaker 7: figured out, hey, corn is super limited on nitrogen. If

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Speaker 7: we pour nitrogen into it, we could you know, double yields.

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Speaker 7: Then we figured out synthetic herbicide, synthetic fertilizer, and then

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Speaker 7: the Earl Betts, who was the Secretary of Agriculture after

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Speaker 7: the Russian Week crisis, said hey, get bigger, get out

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Speaker 7: in terms of agricultural farm detro to ditro. That was

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Speaker 7: that was a statement from the Secretary of Agriculture in

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Speaker 7: the United States.

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Speaker 5: The Case State Radio Network presents an address by the

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Speaker 5: Secretary of the US Department of Agriculture, doctor Earl Buttons.

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Speaker 5: We must learn in this next generation how to feed

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Speaker 5: is many more people as we have learned to feed

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Speaker 5: since the dawn of history. And do it at a

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Speaker 5: time when there is no new western hemisphere to discover,

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Speaker 5: when are no more prairies gods to flow, when the

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Speaker 5: are no more virgin timber on arable land cut down?

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Speaker 5: Do it at a time when we're losing arable and

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Speaker 5: to the urban sprawl to highways. What's the ingridy we're

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Speaker 5: going to put in to agriculture then to get this

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Speaker 5: job done, science brain polom professional leadership for our scientists

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Speaker 5: battle with mother Nature.

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Speaker 1: Earl Butts was the United States Secretary of Agriculture from

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one to nineteen seventy six. During his time

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Speaker 1: in this role, Butts drastically changed agriculture policy, which had

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Speaker 1: significant impacts on the country's landscape. Some of his more

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Speaker 1: notable acts include getting rid of a program that paid

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Speaker 1: farmers to not plant all of their land and saying

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Speaker 1: things like get big or get out and plant fence

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Speaker 1: road to fence row. All of these things carry a

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Speaker 1: synonymous message of urging and incentivizing more land being put

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Speaker 1: into production. Doctor Mark McConnell has more thoughts on.

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Speaker 3: This and that expanded ag.

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Speaker 7: So I think you hear a lot of old timers

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Speaker 7: talked about, Oh yeah, we used to go had a

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Speaker 7: covey over here. We'd go hunt down the fence row

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Speaker 7: when we were kids, go find a fence row. Nowadays

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Speaker 7: there are no fence rows right, and what fence rows

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Speaker 7: are left, they've got round up, or they're we'd eeded,

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Speaker 7: you know whatever, they're clean. So we took all the

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Speaker 7: fenceros out. Then we realized we got bigger, So the

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Speaker 7: combines got bigger, and the equipment got bigger. So now

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Speaker 7: you got a twenty four row planner when everybody was

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Speaker 7: playing four row planner.

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Speaker 3: So the fields got bigger.

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Speaker 7: And as we expanded fields, we took out those margins,

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Speaker 7: those areas, those odd areas, they probably weren't the best ground.

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Speaker 7: But then maybe a separated of a fence line or

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Speaker 7: property boundary. That's where people were finding quailed in the

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Speaker 7: sixties in Mississippi. I've talked to old timers who were

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Speaker 7: still hunting them pretty hard up into the early eighties,

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Speaker 7: and they said, right about the early eighties they were like,

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Speaker 7: a R.

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Speaker 3: We're not gonna We're not gonna buy a new bird dog.

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Speaker 1: I was talking to I was interviewing James Martin, but

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Speaker 1: he said they were on their last bird. And I said, dude,

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Speaker 1: that sounds.

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Speaker 3: Like the title to the very in country song.

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Speaker 4: Like that's a country song.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, on my last that would be depressing. But

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Speaker 7: somebody should write that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I can hear the tune in my head right now. Man,

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Speaker 1: that sounds like a Muscadine bloodline song just waiting to

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Speaker 1: be written. Mark and I are joking here, but many

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Speaker 1: of us have fathers or grandfathers that have stories similar

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Speaker 1: to this that were very real experiences for them. Think

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Speaker 1: back to Will's uncle and his dog Shyenne. I even

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Speaker 1: have a picture of my own grandfather with his English

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Speaker 1: pointer when he was in his early thirties quail hunting

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Speaker 1: in Webster County, Mississippi.

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Speaker 4: Those days are gone now.

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Speaker 1: If a fellow was driving around Mississippi these days with

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Speaker 1: an English pointer, he would catch more than a few

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Speaker 1: odd looks, and that is sad to me, but there

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Speaker 1: is hope. Wilber Primo's is one of the guys that's

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Speaker 1: doing something to get quail back on the landscape. You

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Speaker 1: are one of the first people that I can remember

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Speaker 1: that back when you had Rivers Run, you were doing

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Speaker 1: things on that property to promote Bob Whaite quail.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 6: I love conservation and love trying to understand what we

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Speaker 6: did wrong and what caused some of these things not

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Speaker 6: to go the way they could have to keep the

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Speaker 6: tradition alive, and there's some people that are restoring them well.

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Speaker 6: First off, a lot of it was roa crop. It

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Speaker 6: was marginal rocrop, dry ground farming. It was not profitable,

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Speaker 6: and so when I bought it again, looked at I said,

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Speaker 6: what's the.

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Speaker 4: Better use for this land?

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Speaker 6: And I met with ended up meeting a guy named

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Speaker 6: Nick Thomas who founded the company cost Stewart Link that

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Speaker 6: puts controvation on the ground helps represent the growers to

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Speaker 6: NRCS at FSA offices. I met with him and said, look,

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Speaker 6: can I put this back into some type of quail habitat.

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Speaker 6: He said, yeah, we planting warm season native grasses and

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Speaker 6: we've got experts that'll help show you how to get ready,

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Speaker 6: how to get the ground prepared, how to it'll take

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Speaker 6: you over a year to get this going and get

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Speaker 6: it planted. There's so much to learn. You got to

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Speaker 6: have the right kind of planner. You got to choose

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Speaker 6: the different grasses that were native to Mississippi. So I

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Speaker 6: ended up with blue stem and Indian grass and gamma grass.

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Speaker 4: I mean, it was, it was done. We had a

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Speaker 4: few quail.

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Speaker 6: You'd be on deer standing, you'd see you'd hear the quail,

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Speaker 6: or you see them walk by.

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Speaker 2: I remember that.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I was.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I was amazed. I hadn't seen it. That's the

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Speaker 1: first time I was Probably that was I would have

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Speaker 1: been twenty two years old. Yeah, and I don't think

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Speaker 1: I had seen a quail since I was like twelve.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: When I saw those rivers running, I was amazed.

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Speaker 4: And they walked by the edge of the woods.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 6: And so when we did the grass and we gave

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Speaker 6: them the habitat, I mean exploded. So the most fun

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Speaker 6: for me was in the spring to step outside and

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Speaker 6: to see how many males I could count singing. It

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Speaker 6: never count. There's one, there's one, there's one. I think

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Speaker 6: my highest I ever got to it was thirteen. Yeah.

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Speaker 4: Oh it was really cool. Yeah, because you got to burn.

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Speaker 4: You can't burn too much. You burn too often and

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Speaker 4: gets too thick. It's too thick. That's not good. You know.

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Speaker 4: Quail need to be able to run around on the ground.

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Speaker 4: They got to run.

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Speaker 6: Between the clumps of grasses. They got to have escape cover.

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Speaker 6: I planted plums, thickets, I planted. I tried to do

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Speaker 6: everything I could.

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Speaker 4: It was fun.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: What do you think the biggest hurdle is? You know,

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Speaker 1: because I was talking to start to several folks about this,

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Speaker 1: and it's like one of the biggest things that they

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Speaker 1: think quail faced, just talking about specifically here at home

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Speaker 1: in the Southeast, is that in order, because we talked

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Speaker 1: about you have to be there almost has to be

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Speaker 1: an intentionality about it. These days, if you're gonna have

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Speaker 1: quail on a property and so to do that, you

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Speaker 1: have to have people landowners, hunters that are interested in it.

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Speaker 1: And that's kind of a tall order right now, because

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Speaker 1: there's not too many places that someone could go and

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Speaker 1: find quail. There's not too many places someone could go

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Speaker 1: and find a good bird dog because you don't see

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Speaker 1: too many people down here riding around with setters and

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Speaker 1: pointers anymore. There's just they're gone for the most part.

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Speaker 4: That's right. When you lose the resource, you lose a

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Speaker 4: lot that goes with it.

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Speaker 1: If you think about it, and I can get most

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Speaker 1: upland hunters, can you romanticize about it? We all can

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Speaker 1: we just lose a bird? We lost in entire hunting culture.

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Speaker 1: And I liking it now because spring turkey hunting or

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Speaker 1: duck hunting, or deer.

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Speaker 3: Hunting, whatever. And I tell folks, imagine it was gone.

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Speaker 1: All of it's Goneine, if you take like, think about

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Speaker 1: deer hunt. Let's talk about deer. But if you take

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Speaker 1: away the deer, then the deer hunt's gone. What else

395
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Speaker 1: is gone?

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Speaker 3: Deer camp, deer camp.

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Speaker 1: Deer you weekends at deer camp, watching the football game

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Speaker 1: and grilling out.

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Speaker 3: That's gone now.

400
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Speaker 1: Stories of you telling your buddies, checking your trail cameras

401
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Speaker 1: all the time, It's all gone. I'm interested in how

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Speaker 1: wildlife affects humans and human culture. And although much of

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Speaker 1: it is gone now, coil used to dominate the hunting

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Speaker 1: culture of the Southeast, much like deer camps dominate the

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Speaker 1: hunting culture now.

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Speaker 3: It was a different world.

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Speaker 7: True.

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Speaker 1: Here's Will on how he and his family used to

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Speaker 1: celebrate quail season.

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Speaker 6: They were a good many of guys like that, and

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Speaker 6: they would have dinners over at Guss's house after season

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Speaker 6: that have a big quail dinner, and by all of

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Speaker 6: their friends that do it. I don't know how prevalent

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Speaker 6: it was. You hear a lot of people that you

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00:20:20,640 --> 00:20:23,919
Speaker 6: meet today. I'm in my seventies and you hear a

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Speaker 6: lot of people talk about, you know, their daddies and

417
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Speaker 6: that are my age. So you know, we're almost one

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Speaker 6: generation past it because it was the generation before me

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Speaker 6: that had the quantity and the quality and had that opportunity.

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Speaker 1: I don't know about y'all, but I would give an

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Speaker 1: awful lot to be able to go back in time

422
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Speaker 1: and attend one of those quail dinners at Will's uncle's house.

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Speaker 1: And while I could continue on about the plight of

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Speaker 1: the Bob White quail and the long lost hunting culture,

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Speaker 1: I think it's important to point out that there is

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Speaker 1: a silver lining here. In the past ten years, there's

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00:21:00,200 --> 00:21:04,760
Speaker 1: resurgence not just in quail, but in people people like you,

428
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Speaker 1: people like me, people with an interest in quail, quail

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Speaker 1: habitat and quail hunting.

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Speaker 7: It's a different landscape, but where people are trying, they've

431
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Speaker 7: got quit. That's kind of the resounding message of hope

432
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Speaker 7: is if you've got them, and you've got some acreage,

433
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Speaker 7: and you've got some buddiest next to you, that will

434
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Speaker 7: help out.

435
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Speaker 3: There's a lot of things you can do to.

436
00:21:25,240 --> 00:21:28,159
Speaker 7: Keep everyone talks about and it is. That's a terribly

437
00:21:28,160 --> 00:21:32,280
Speaker 7: depressing story of the quail. It really is. But the

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Speaker 7: longer I've been doing this, I'm like, you know what, Yeah,

439
00:21:34,240 --> 00:21:37,800
Speaker 7: it's depressing, but it's also pretty inspiring the fact that

440
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Speaker 7: I like I can go to Rankin County. I did

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00:21:39,640 --> 00:21:41,840
Speaker 7: a site visit in Ranking County with John Mark Curtis,

442
00:21:41,880 --> 00:21:45,280
Speaker 7: our quil Forever state biologist. We did a site visit

443
00:21:45,440 --> 00:21:48,479
Speaker 7: got two years ago now and the guy had some pines,

444
00:21:48,560 --> 00:21:50,399
Speaker 7: not many, couple hundred acres he was burning them with

445
00:21:50,480 --> 00:21:53,440
Speaker 7: then them His neighbor had a tornado come through. I

446
00:21:53,480 --> 00:21:55,800
Speaker 7: think it was a hardwood stand and just ripped it

447
00:21:55,840 --> 00:21:57,600
Speaker 7: and es salvaged. It was like a nice little clear cut.

448
00:21:58,000 --> 00:22:01,320
Speaker 7: There were quails singing everywhere in Rankin County, not far

449
00:22:01,359 --> 00:22:06,240
Speaker 7: off major highway. And we're driving back and he said

450
00:22:06,240 --> 00:22:08,760
Speaker 7: something pretty cool. He's like, you know, just about anywhere

451
00:22:08,760 --> 00:22:11,600
Speaker 7: in this state, if people try, they can get quail.

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00:22:11,640 --> 00:22:12,880
Speaker 3: Now, they're not going to get a bird break.

453
00:22:13,480 --> 00:22:16,359
Speaker 7: But this guy, I think he texts John Mark earlier

454
00:22:16,440 --> 00:22:18,960
Speaker 7: or last late last year saying, oh, yeah, went out

455
00:22:19,040 --> 00:22:20,720
Speaker 7: hunting with the bird, you know, the dog and found

456
00:22:20,720 --> 00:22:21,320
Speaker 7: a few covees.

457
00:22:21,359 --> 00:22:24,040
Speaker 3: You know, he was elated. He could not have been happier.

458
00:22:24,600 --> 00:22:28,280
Speaker 3: And he wasn't doing anything all that unique anymore. I mean,

459
00:22:28,280 --> 00:22:30,720
Speaker 3: he's just then his pies and was lighting fires every

460
00:22:30,760 --> 00:22:31,240
Speaker 3: two years.

461
00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:36,040
Speaker 1: So you're basically saying that the narrative of the Bob

462
00:22:36,080 --> 00:22:39,760
Speaker 1: White quail here in the Southeast, rather than the plight.

463
00:22:39,560 --> 00:22:40,520
Speaker 4: Of the Bob White.

464
00:22:40,320 --> 00:22:42,359
Speaker 1: Quail, it should be more of like, look at this

465
00:22:42,400 --> 00:22:44,080
Speaker 1: bird that refuses to give up.

466
00:22:44,119 --> 00:22:44,520
Speaker 4: That's right.

467
00:22:44,760 --> 00:22:47,360
Speaker 3: The resilience of Bob White to hang on.

468
00:22:47,640 --> 00:22:50,400
Speaker 7: Now they've been locally exportrated from or you know, there's

469
00:22:50,440 --> 00:22:52,920
Speaker 7: areas where you're not going to find them whatever, there's

470
00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:55,800
Speaker 7: plenty of that. So the story that I like to

471
00:22:55,800 --> 00:22:58,680
Speaker 7: focus on, Now, yes, we need to teach the historical demise,

472
00:22:59,040 --> 00:23:01,320
Speaker 7: but the fact that these things are still around with

473
00:23:01,440 --> 00:23:05,120
Speaker 7: everything we put against them, I mean, it's amazing.

474
00:23:10,359 --> 00:23:12,800
Speaker 1: A bird that just won't give up. Now that's a

475
00:23:12,840 --> 00:23:15,560
Speaker 1: story I can get behind. So let's take a quick

476
00:23:15,600 --> 00:23:18,000
Speaker 1: look back at what we learned this week. Bob Whack

477
00:23:18,080 --> 00:23:20,800
Speaker 1: quail have been kicking around on this continent for roughly

478
00:23:20,880 --> 00:23:24,800
Speaker 1: a million years, meaning they crossed paths with and outlasted

479
00:23:24,880 --> 00:23:28,120
Speaker 1: animals like the wooly mammoth and the groundsloth. I still

480
00:23:28,160 --> 00:23:30,120
Speaker 1: think that's wild. We used to have them in great

481
00:23:30,160 --> 00:23:33,600
Speaker 1: abundance until the first notable declines in the eighteen nineties. However,

482
00:23:33,840 --> 00:23:36,680
Speaker 1: quail populations and quail hunting remained good up into the

483
00:23:36,720 --> 00:23:40,080
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties and sixties, and then, due to multiple factors

484
00:23:40,119 --> 00:23:44,359
Speaker 1: such as agricultural expansion, urban sprawl, habitat loss, and many others,

485
00:23:44,600 --> 00:23:48,280
Speaker 1: quail declines got worse. But like we just mentioned, this

486
00:23:48,359 --> 00:23:51,640
Speaker 1: bird just refuses to quit. I want to thank all

487
00:23:51,680 --> 00:23:54,280
Speaker 1: of you for listening to Backwoods University as well as

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00:23:54,320 --> 00:23:56,560
Speaker 1: Bear Grease in this Country Life, and I want to

489
00:23:56,560 --> 00:23:58,560
Speaker 1: give a big shout out to Onyx Hunt for making

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00:23:58,600 --> 00:24:01,919
Speaker 1: this podcast possible. Next time, we're gonna learn what the

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00:24:01,960 --> 00:24:04,800
Speaker 1: future of Bob White Quayle could look like and what

492
00:24:04,880 --> 00:24:07,120
Speaker 1: people like you and me can do to help keep

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00:24:07,119 --> 00:24:07,600
Speaker 1: them around