WEBVTT - Ep. 336: Backwoods University - The Rise and Fall of Bobwhite Quail 0:00:02.560 --> 0:00:06.680 Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife, 0:00:07.000 --> 0:00:10.080 wild places and the people who dedicate their lives to 0:00:10.119 --> 0:00:13.640 conserving both. On this episode, I want to tell you 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:16.640 about Bob white quail, a bird that once covered the 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:20.520 entire North American continent in abundance, and the hunting culture 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:25.720 centered completely around them that now has almost been completely forgotten. 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:37.960 It's late January. I'm in North Mississippi, and the sound 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:40.720 that you're hearing is me hiking through the woods. I've 0:00:40.720 --> 0:00:42.920 been at this all day with a new friend of 0:00:42.920 --> 0:00:46.879 mine and his dog. We're out hunting, but we're not 0:00:46.960 --> 0:00:50.040 here hunting deer. We're not here hunting ducks. We're not 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:53.519 even here hunting squirrels. In fact, the few other hunters 0:00:53.520 --> 0:00:56.440 that we've crossed paths with today gave us odd looks 0:00:56.440 --> 0:00:58.520 when we told them what we were here after. 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:02.959 What's the most cubes you found in today? You said, too, 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:05.720 And both of them pretty sizeable cubies. 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:08.840 You said, yeah, yeah, there's two covees in here. 0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:11.800 According to when I came in September. 0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:13.679 One was falling away that way here. 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:18.479 I'm quite surprised we didn't push them because they usually well, 0:01:18.480 --> 0:01:20.240 we'll make a circle and come in the window. 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:21.000 Be in our favor. 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:21.600 Come. 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:26.360 What we're hunting is bob white quail, an animal that 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:31.160 is called this place, this state, this continent home since 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:33.280 before any of us were alive on this earth. But 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:37.959 unfortunately these days can be tough to find. Our mission 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:42.039 today is simple, find wild quail. We're in an area 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:48.720 where there still remains a huntable population. We hiked onward, 0:01:49.080 --> 0:01:52.120 following the dog through every thorn, bramble and cane thicket 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:55.160 that she could find, until eventually she went on point, 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:57.600 letting us know she had found a bird. 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:00.840 Oh yeah, Burdon, what. 0:02:00.720 --> 0:02:03.000 You're hearing now is us making a game plan as 0:02:03.000 --> 0:02:05.240 to how to approach the dog on point and flush 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:08.320 the bird. This can be extremely tricky putting ourselves in 0:02:08.360 --> 0:02:10.720 position for a good shot, given the type of thickets 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:16.959 these birds call home. This next part, flushing the bird, 0:02:17.240 --> 0:02:20.880 is almost unbearably suspensable. You don't know where it's gonna happen, 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:23.119 you don't know when it's gonna happen. You just walk 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:25.680 towards the dog, waiting for the forest floor to erupt 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:33.600 under your feet, and you better be ready. 0:02:37.400 --> 0:02:44.160 Wow, that's my fault. That was more mesmerized with the 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:45.960 bird than anything. I think. 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:50.120 Wow, I stood there, motionless in awe of what I 0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:53.320 had just seen. A single quail exploded out of that 0:02:53.400 --> 0:02:56.000 sea of thorny vines, flew right over the top of 0:02:56.040 --> 0:02:58.920 my head, and disappeared back into the brush so quickly 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:01.600 that the whole insie that became a memory quicker than 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:04.280 I could even process the fact that I had missed. 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:08.000 We both missed, and frankly, I don't think either of 0:03:08.080 --> 0:03:10.560 us cared. But here's the big picture of all this. 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:14.079 Like I mentioned earlier, Bob white quail or native here. 0:03:14.480 --> 0:03:17.840 They've called this entire continent home for a long time. 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:21.080 There's research that even has them on the landscape up 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:24.040 to a million years ago. That means that Bob white 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:26.760 quail were flying in Whistling the same time that Willie 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:29.840 mammoths and ground slots were still roaming around. That is 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:33.520 wild to me. And at one point, not too long ago, 0:03:33.960 --> 0:03:36.320 there was so many that we had an entire hunting 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:40.120 culture built around them, and now in twenty twenty five, 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:43.040 they've been reduced to a fraction of what once was. 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:49.880 And I'm on a mission to find out why. The 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:51.640 guy that's going to help us do that as someone 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:54.600 you probably already know. His name is Will Primos, and 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:57.000 he's been a dear friend and mentor for me for 0:03:57.120 --> 0:03:59.839 well over a decade. You and I both know Will 0:03:59.840 --> 0:04:03.400 for spring turkey hunting, elk white tails, but I never 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:06.400 knew he got his start hunting with Bob white quail. 0:04:07.240 --> 0:04:09.760 I'm sitting in Will's office. The room is filled with 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:14.600 countless celebrations of the outdoors, antler's hand carved duck decoys, 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:18.839 paintings of wild turkeys, countless books. And I've had the 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:21.359 pleasure of knowing Will for a long time. But I 0:04:21.360 --> 0:04:24.840 couldn't help but notice his enthusiasm today. I think he's 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:26.279 excited to share this story. 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:32.719 My uncle Gus was a devoted quail hunter. He had 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:36.599 pointers and shutters, and I can still remember the setter. 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:41.200 Her name was Cheyenne, and I got paid a quarter 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:45.160 for school get up, and he lived like a real 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:46.559 third of a mile away. 0:04:46.600 --> 0:04:48.120 You know, it wasn't very far, but I could get 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:48.840 there on my bicycle. 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:53.039 No, I would go over there, run over there and 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:55.760 for a quorder. I got the cleaning dog pins and 0:04:56.120 --> 0:04:58.080 that started probably when I was about eight years old. 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:01.760 Will's connection the quail and bird dogs started and he 0:05:01.800 --> 0:05:04.440 was just a boy in rural Mississippi in the nineteen fifties. 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:06.880 Little did he know that this would start a fire 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:08.440 that would burn for a lifetime. 0:05:08.880 --> 0:05:11.120 Here's more from Will about his uncle Gus. 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:16.039 But his friend was Buck Deerman, and Buck Buck came 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:20.080 a fast friend of mine. As I grew over, Buck 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:22.000 and Gus would go quail hunting. 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:23.640 And Madison County. 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:25.839 Which is where we are right now, where I live, 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:30.440 back then was a rural setting. Used to be big, 0:05:30.600 --> 0:05:35.279 huge cotton plantations, rolling cotton plantations. And back then what 0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:38.160 they did the crime was very fertile that had never 0:05:38.200 --> 0:05:39.200 been farm or anything. 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:39.840 They clear it. 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:42.480 They'd plant their crops, and when they depleted the nourishment 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:42.880 of the soul. 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:44.280 They didn't have furlizer stuff. 0:05:44.400 --> 0:05:47.880 They just go clear another patch of land and that 0:05:48.000 --> 0:05:51.880 other would grow up. And over the many, many decades 0:05:51.960 --> 0:05:57.359 and years, Madison County became small rural farm vegetable gardens 0:05:57.360 --> 0:05:58.919 and people who wanted to live in the country. 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:03.000 Is everywhere, no posted signs. 0:06:03.080 --> 0:06:05.240 You just pulled up gut out of your car and 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:07.520 it was just perfect quail habitat. 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:09.760 I didn't know that at the time, I just thought 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:10.560 that was normal. 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:13.160 What Will just told us there is one of the 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:16.599 most important parts of this entire story. It's really not 0:06:16.680 --> 0:06:20.800 even about quail. It's quail habitat. Remember that because that 0:06:20.920 --> 0:06:23.200 detail is going to become more relevant later on. 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:28.719 But Buck was very long legged, and Gus was almost 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:32.120 as long legged. And here this little kid is and 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:34.560 just trying to keep up with them. But to see 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:37.000 the dogs work, and they wouldn't let me carry a 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:39.080 gun in those early years, but I got to be 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:41.880 there and watch the dog's point, watch them shoot, and 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:45.320 both of them shot browning automatics, you know, the old 0:06:45.320 --> 0:06:47.160 Belgian may Old hump back, you know. 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:51.080 Anyway, my uncle Gust died a few years ago, but I. 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:54.279 Remember in his home he had a beautiful den where 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:56.159 he would entertain. He was a big business man. He 0:06:56.320 --> 0:07:00.880 had entertained and he had a portrait commission to portrait 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:03.640 to be made of him kneeling down with his shotgun 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:05.640 with cheyenne. 0:07:05.839 --> 0:07:08.240 I got a chance to see this painting, and frankly, 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:12.160 it's incredible. A square jawed man with black hair wearing 0:07:12.200 --> 0:07:15.040 a khaki jacket knelt down with his bird dogs. And 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:18.200 I couldn't help but notice how much of a resemblance 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:18.960 it had to Will. 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:21.000 I think this gives. 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:24.280 Us a really clear picture into how important and valued 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:26.480 quail and quail hunting was at the time. 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:27.760 I mean, think about it. 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:30.600 How many people do you know these days that commission 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:32.680 a painter to do a portrait of their duck, dog 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:36.360 or a deer that they shot. Bob White quail meant 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:39.240 something to these people. But what really sticks out to 0:07:39.320 --> 0:07:42.880 me is the background of this painting. It looks nothing 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:45.840 like what Madison County, Mississippi looks like today. 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:46.680 Today. 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:50.440 It's neighborhoods, business parks, pine plantations. Whether he meant to 0:07:50.600 --> 0:07:53.400 or not, Will showing us this painting gave us one 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:57.480 of the most crucial pieces to this quail puzzle, its habitat. 0:07:58.360 --> 0:08:00.320 I now want to hear from a biologist to give 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:03.200 us more on this quail story. Mark McConnell is an 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:06.920 upland bird professor at Mississippi State University. He starts off 0:08:06.920 --> 0:08:10.240 by talking about Tall Timbers. FYI, this is one of 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:14.640 the nation's largest quail research centers located in South Georgia. 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:17.800 Some of the early research I know you know about 0:08:17.840 --> 0:08:21.240 Tall Timbers Research Station, Well, that research station was started 0:08:21.760 --> 0:08:24.200 as a response to quail decline even in that part 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:24.880 of the world. 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:26.200 Right that book right. 0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:28.160 There on my desk, right next to you, that's considered 0:08:28.160 --> 0:08:29.960 like the quail Bible. It was like the first really 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:33.960 robust study of Bob White. They started that study. They 0:08:33.960 --> 0:08:36.040 published in nineteen thirty one, but they started it, you know, 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:37.479 several years before. 0:08:37.240 --> 0:08:41.360 That nineteen thirty one, so they were already seeing declines 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:42.240 in nineteen thirty one. 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:44.520 They were seeing declines in the late eighteen nineties. 0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:46.120 Oh wow, I did not know that. 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:46.600 Yeah. 0:08:46.960 --> 0:08:48.280 You hear a lot of people say, oh, they've been 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:50.960 declined since the sixties. The longason we say that is 0:08:51.000 --> 0:08:53.600 because the Breeding Bird Survey started in nineteen sixty six, 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:56.600 So that's the first documented decline. 0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:01.200 The eighteen nineties. Will was just telling us these incredible 0:09:01.280 --> 0:09:04.480 quail hunting stories from Mississippi in the nineteen fifties. Now 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:07.520 Mark's telling us the decline started sixty years earlier than that. 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:09.000 I can't keep up. 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:12.680 I want to ask Mark about quail declines in densities. 0:09:14.280 --> 0:09:16.319 And there's a fair amount of reasons for that. If 0:09:16.320 --> 0:09:17.840 you think about what was going on in the country 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:20.040 and kind of some of the industrial nature of things. 0:09:20.520 --> 0:09:23.920 Herbert Stoddard said at the time that he thought a 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:26.680 bird per acre was as good as you could ever get, 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:29.480 and then they found out through time and tall timbers 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:33.160 is a great example of this. You absolutely can get 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:35.760 more than a bird breaker. There are there are places 0:09:35.800 --> 0:09:37.880 in the Red Hills that can hit a bird and 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:40.400 a half two birds breaker. Now you don't stay there forever. 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:43.880 You know, populations nothing goes up forever, right, but you 0:09:43.880 --> 0:09:47.000 can absolutely exceed that density to barying degrees. People would 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:56.600 wet their pants over bird p Yeah, Mississippi. So kind 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:58.520 of the story of Quail. If he started with thirty 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:03.520 thousand foot view, the entire landscape change everything we did. 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:08.240 The landscape, with very few exceptions, wasn't designed to mess 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:11.640 up Quail, but it certainly messed up Quail. Think about, say, 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:15.040 let's go eighteen ninety nineteen hundred somewhere in that pre 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:17.760 World War One, think about what the landscape would have 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:21.440 looked like. We did not have the Green Revolution of agriculture. Yet, 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:26.960 we didn't have fescue yet. Oh the tall fescue. It's 0:10:27.000 --> 0:10:30.640 an exotic forage grass that we brought over to stabilize 0:10:30.640 --> 0:10:32.400 soil and it's a great winter forage because it's a 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:35.800 cool season grass. It's a very challenging plant for quail management. 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:37.920 So we know it was before Bermuda grass, it was 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:40.959 before behaya grass. It was before all these exotic forage 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:44.760 grasses took over grazing and forage production. It was before 0:10:44.800 --> 0:10:48.440 we were farming loblolly pine trees like road crops. That's 0:10:48.480 --> 0:10:51.240 about the time we kind of the national US policy 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:53.280 was pretty much anti fire. 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:55.440 Fire was a bad thing, right. 0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:58.319 So you've got industrialization, you've got expansion, you've got all 0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:01.679 these things happening over the next several years, and it 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:04.199 just it all kind of just came together and congealed 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:06.960 to just create a landscape where quail could not exist 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:07.800 at high densities. 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:11.160 That's one thing that it's interesting as I've done some 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:14.439 of this digging and some of this research, is I'm 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:16.800 thirty two years old. You take someone a little bit 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:19.400 younger than me that grew up and let's just say 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:21.199 Mississippi because is where we're at, but this could be 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:23.920 applied to a lot of much of the Southeast. You 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:25.920 take someone that's just a little bit younger than me, 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:30.480 then a state of Mississippi that is virtually completely dominated 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:35.160 by law Volley pine plantation lines. And to them, that's normal, 0:11:35.280 --> 0:11:38.839 that's Mississippi, that's our forest composition, that's what the state 0:11:38.880 --> 0:11:42.600 looks like. And what's wild is you really don't have 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:46.520 to go that far back before it was wildly different. 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:51.360 It's clear that the landscape changed in the United States 0:11:51.440 --> 0:11:54.600 dramatically in the nineteen hundreds, but why. 0:11:55.920 --> 0:11:57.800 You had the dust Bowl era and then you had 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:01.280 all these conservation type approaches, but most of them were planning, 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:04.360 you know, exotic grass to stabilize the soil, which you know, 0:12:04.440 --> 0:12:06.280 had a kind of initial Ooh, there's grass. 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:08.079 Then I was like, oh god, it's bad grass, and. 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:10.160 We kind of regretted it. And then right as you're 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:12.480 ramping up in the sixties at the Green Revolution, we 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:15.679 figured out, hey, corn is super limited on nitrogen. If 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:18.720 we pour nitrogen into it, we could you know, double yields. 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:22.640 Then we figured out synthetic herbicide, synthetic fertilizer, and then 0:12:22.760 --> 0:12:25.400 the Earl Betts, who was the Secretary of Agriculture after 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:27.640 the Russian Week crisis, said hey, get bigger, get out 0:12:27.640 --> 0:12:29.920 in terms of agricultural farm detro to ditro. That was 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:32.719 that was a statement from the Secretary of Agriculture in 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:33.440 the United States. 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:37.360 The Case State Radio Network presents an address by the 0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:41.040 Secretary of the US Department of Agriculture, doctor Earl Buttons. 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:45.200 We must learn in this next generation how to feed 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:47.439 is many more people as we have learned to feed 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:50.960 since the dawn of history. And do it at a 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:53.600 time when there is no new western hemisphere to discover, 0:12:54.720 --> 0:12:57.719 when are no more prairies gods to flow, when the 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:00.600 are no more virgin timber on arable land cut down? 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:04.000 Do it at a time when we're losing arable and 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:09.040 to the urban sprawl to highways. What's the ingridy we're 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:11.360 going to put in to agriculture then to get this 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:17.640 job done, science brain polom professional leadership for our scientists 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:19.160 battle with mother Nature. 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:31.600 Earl Butts was the United States Secretary of Agriculture from 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:35.040 nineteen seventy one to nineteen seventy six. During his time 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:38.959 in this role, Butts drastically changed agriculture policy, which had 0:13:38.960 --> 0:13:41.840 significant impacts on the country's landscape. Some of his more 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:44.839 notable acts include getting rid of a program that paid 0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:47.520 farmers to not plant all of their land and saying 0:13:47.600 --> 0:13:50.200 things like get big or get out and plant fence 0:13:50.280 --> 0:13:53.000 road to fence row. All of these things carry a 0:13:53.040 --> 0:13:57.480 synonymous message of urging and incentivizing more land being put 0:13:57.559 --> 0:14:01.240 into production. Doctor Mark McConnell has more thoughts on. 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:04.760 This and that expanded ag. 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:06.160 So I think you hear a lot of old timers 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:07.960 talked about, Oh yeah, we used to go had a 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:09.720 covey over here. We'd go hunt down the fence row 0:14:09.720 --> 0:14:12.760 when we were kids, go find a fence row. Nowadays 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:15.960 there are no fence rows right, and what fence rows 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:18.760 are left, they've got round up, or they're we'd eeded, 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:21.080 you know whatever, they're clean. So we took all the 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:23.680 fenceros out. Then we realized we got bigger, So the 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:25.800 combines got bigger, and the equipment got bigger. So now 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:27.920 you got a twenty four row planner when everybody was 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:28.880 playing four row planner. 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:30.040 So the fields got bigger. 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:32.840 And as we expanded fields, we took out those margins, 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:36.320 those areas, those odd areas, they probably weren't the best ground. 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:38.560 But then maybe a separated of a fence line or 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:41.120 property boundary. That's where people were finding quailed in the 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:43.560 sixties in Mississippi. I've talked to old timers who were 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:45.600 still hunting them pretty hard up into the early eighties, 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:48.480 and they said, right about the early eighties they were like, 0:14:48.480 --> 0:14:48.720 a R. 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:51.480 We're not gonna We're not gonna buy a new bird dog. 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:54.640 I was talking to I was interviewing James Martin, but 0:14:54.720 --> 0:14:58.040 he said they were on their last bird. And I said, dude, 0:14:58.040 --> 0:14:59.040 that sounds. 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:01.000 Like the title to the very in country song. 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:02.720 Like that's a country song. 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:05.760 Yeah, yeah, on my last that would be depressing. But 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:06.760 somebody should write that. 0:15:06.880 --> 0:15:08.720 Yeah. 0:15:09.120 --> 0:15:11.560 I can hear the tune in my head right now. Man, 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:14.320 that sounds like a Muscadine bloodline song just waiting to 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:18.120 be written. Mark and I are joking here, but many 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:21.320 of us have fathers or grandfathers that have stories similar 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:24.720 to this that were very real experiences for them. Think 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:27.600 back to Will's uncle and his dog Shyenne. I even 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:30.200 have a picture of my own grandfather with his English 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:32.520 pointer when he was in his early thirties quail hunting 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:34.080 in Webster County, Mississippi. 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:35.960 Those days are gone now. 0:15:36.280 --> 0:15:38.520 If a fellow was driving around Mississippi these days with 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:40.520 an English pointer, he would catch more than a few 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:45.560 odd looks, and that is sad to me, but there 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:48.720 is hope. Wilber Primo's is one of the guys that's 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:55.560 doing something to get quail back on the landscape. You 0:15:55.600 --> 0:15:57.880 are one of the first people that I can remember 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:01.480 that back when you had Rivers Run, you were doing 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:04.040 things on that property to promote Bob Whaite quail. 0:16:04.160 --> 0:16:04.640 Yeah. 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:07.880 I love conservation and love trying to understand what we 0:16:07.920 --> 0:16:10.400 did wrong and what caused some of these things not 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:12.800 to go the way they could have to keep the 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:16.360 tradition alive, and there's some people that are restoring them well. 0:16:16.400 --> 0:16:19.120 First off, a lot of it was roa crop. It 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:23.320 was marginal rocrop, dry ground farming. It was not profitable, 0:16:23.800 --> 0:16:25.600 and so when I bought it again, looked at I said, 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:25.840 what's the. 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:27.160 Better use for this land? 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:30.960 And I met with ended up meeting a guy named 0:16:31.000 --> 0:16:34.400 Nick Thomas who founded the company cost Stewart Link that 0:16:34.680 --> 0:16:39.080 puts controvation on the ground helps represent the growers to 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:42.920 NRCS at FSA offices. I met with him and said, look, 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:45.800 can I put this back into some type of quail habitat. 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:48.200 He said, yeah, we planting warm season native grasses and 0:16:48.240 --> 0:16:51.160 we've got experts that'll help show you how to get ready, 0:16:51.160 --> 0:16:54.240 how to get the ground prepared, how to it'll take 0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:57.600 you over a year to get this going and get 0:16:57.680 --> 0:17:01.000 it planted. There's so much to learn. You got to 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:03.000 have the right kind of planner. You got to choose 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:07.199 the different grasses that were native to Mississippi. So I 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:11.240 ended up with blue stem and Indian grass and gamma grass. 0:17:11.480 --> 0:17:13.679 I mean, it was, it was done. We had a 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:14.240 few quail. 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:17.159 You'd be on deer standing, you'd see you'd hear the quail, 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:18.080 or you see them walk by. 0:17:18.320 --> 0:17:18.960 I remember that. 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:19.879 Yeah, I was. 0:17:20.080 --> 0:17:22.520 Yeah, I was amazed. I hadn't seen it. That's the 0:17:22.520 --> 0:17:24.679 first time I was Probably that was I would have 0:17:24.680 --> 0:17:28.040 been twenty two years old. Yeah, and I don't think 0:17:28.080 --> 0:17:30.240 I had seen a quail since I was like twelve. 0:17:30.400 --> 0:17:30.640 Yeah. 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:32.680 When I saw those rivers running, I was amazed. 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:34.119 And they walked by the edge of the woods. 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:34.400 Yeah. 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:34.800 Yeah. 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:37.960 And so when we did the grass and we gave 0:17:38.040 --> 0:17:42.720 them the habitat, I mean exploded. So the most fun 0:17:42.800 --> 0:17:46.080 for me was in the spring to step outside and 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:49.840 to see how many males I could count singing. It 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:52.720 never count. There's one, there's one, there's one. I think 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:54.880 my highest I ever got to it was thirteen. Yeah. 0:17:54.920 --> 0:17:57.600 Oh it was really cool. Yeah, because you got to burn. 0:17:57.640 --> 0:17:59.639 You can't burn too much. You burn too often and 0:17:59.680 --> 0:18:02.520 gets too thick. It's too thick. That's not good. You know. 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:04.440 Quail need to be able to run around on the ground. 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:05.119 They got to run. 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:08.480 Between the clumps of grasses. They got to have escape cover. 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:12.600 I planted plums, thickets, I planted. I tried to do 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:13.480 everything I could. 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:14.119 It was fun. 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:14.840 Yeah. 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:17.800 What do you think the biggest hurdle is? You know, 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:20.600 because I was talking to start to several folks about this, 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:23.200 and it's like one of the biggest things that they 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:25.920 think quail faced, just talking about specifically here at home 0:18:25.960 --> 0:18:30.880 in the Southeast, is that in order, because we talked 0:18:30.920 --> 0:18:33.080 about you have to be there almost has to be 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:35.919 an intentionality about it. These days, if you're gonna have 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:38.639 quail on a property and so to do that, you 0:18:38.760 --> 0:18:42.920 have to have people landowners, hunters that are interested in it. 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:46.600 And that's kind of a tall order right now, because 0:18:46.600 --> 0:18:50.880 there's not too many places that someone could go and 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:53.480 find quail. There's not too many places someone could go 0:18:53.520 --> 0:18:56.480 and find a good bird dog because you don't see 0:18:56.480 --> 0:18:58.560 too many people down here riding around with setters and 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:01.600 pointers anymore. There's just they're gone for the most part. 0:19:01.640 --> 0:19:05.359 That's right. When you lose the resource, you lose a 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:06.520 lot that goes with it. 0:19:08.640 --> 0:19:11.520 If you think about it, and I can get most 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:14.240 upland hunters, can you romanticize about it? We all can 0:19:14.680 --> 0:19:17.919 we just lose a bird? We lost in entire hunting culture. 0:19:18.800 --> 0:19:22.600 And I liking it now because spring turkey hunting or 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:23.760 duck hunting, or deer. 0:19:23.680 --> 0:19:26.760 Hunting, whatever. And I tell folks, imagine it was gone. 0:19:26.920 --> 0:19:30.280 All of it's Goneine, if you take like, think about 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:32.440 deer hunt. Let's talk about deer. But if you take 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:35.040 away the deer, then the deer hunt's gone. What else 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:35.520 is gone? 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:36.760 Deer camp, deer camp. 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:39.320 Deer you weekends at deer camp, watching the football game 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:39.880 and grilling out. 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:40.560 That's gone now. 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:43.800 Stories of you telling your buddies, checking your trail cameras 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:47.720