Buying Quail Land ?
By Jim Evans
November 3, 2009

GREAT HUNTING RETREAT
This 980 acres will make a great hunting area. Over 400 acres of mature pines, the rest in younger trees.
Abundant deer, quail, and turkey!

Are you scanning the classified ads and touring the countryside, in search of a piece of property to manage for quail?  If the answer is yes, then maybe you need to be thinking about what characteristics would make you want to purchase a particular tract of land and what would cause you to pass on it.  To help you with this process, let’s discuss some various scenarios you are likely to run across.
Forested Land

Quail are a species that prefer a  “early plant succession” habitat, better known to most of us as WEEDS and NATIVE GRASSES.  For quail, the best number of trees per acre is ZERO, but most of us in the southeast are going to find ourselves dealing with a woodland setting of some kind.
When considering a piece of forested land, you need to find out more than just the initial cost per acre. You should also  think about the answers to the following questions:
How much income can I generate by removing most of the timber and when?
How much will it cost me per acre to treat the cut-over areas with a forest herbicide to make sure the acreage becomes  quail habitat and not a jungle of hardwood brush?
Am I paying for existing “improvements” ( extra structures, ponds, improved pasture, planted pine stands, etc.) that I will have to spend money to remove or don’t need.

Asking yourself these questions as you look at different tracts, can help you zero in on your options.  For instance, if the  parcel of land has recently been cut- over,  you will not be able to generate any immediate income from timber sales to put back into the property for brush control.  If the seller  has conducted a “site-prep” herbicide treatment and replanted with Loblolly or Slash  pines, then you would be paying for the land, herbicide work,  plus the establishment of pines trees that are poised in a few years to eliminate your quail habitat options.
On the other hand, if the seller  has conducted a chemical site prep after the harvest, but not yet replanted the acreage with pines, then your timing would be great.  In this case the stage is set for your quail project to begin without having the additional cost of chemical work or paying for the planted pines “improvements” that you don’t want.
If you are looking at  land that was cut over several years ago and no effort was made to  follow  up with any brush control measures, then you should try to negotiate the price per acre down so that you can afford to do the application of forest herbicides ( about $90/acre) after the purchase.  If this is not possible then keep looking  for a tract that will cost less per acre to produce quail habitat.
If the land was established in longleaf pine then the situation changes.  Longleaf pine is a different critter.  There are government programs out there that are trying to increase the acreage of longleaf and native grass ecosystems.  If you run across one of these tracts up for sale, then you may have the option to combine some quail hunting with some degree of future timber income.   Longleaf  pine does not shade out the under-story habitat to the degree of most other pine species.  Also,  control burning can be initiated in it at a much younger age than the typical loblolly stand. With proper management you can keep the ground cover in quail habitat right up until you start thinning the pines.
These are just a few examples, but I believe you get the idea.  Going back to the original questions can help you think things through and sort out your options before buying forested land for a quail project.

FOR SALE  EXCELLENT HUNTING LAND.
150 ACRES OF CROP LAND PLUS 2 LARGE PASTURES, 400 ACRES TOTAL.  FIFTEEN MILES FROM INTERSTATE.

Open Non-forested Land

Much of the unforested land that is available falls into two basic categories:  crop land   and pasture land.
When you come upon quail land of this type, you may want to ask yourself similar questions to those asked about forested land, such as the initial cost per acre and what income can you generate on the land to help off set management costs.  Also, you need to identify what type of beneficial or non-beneficial vegetation presently exists on the property.
For instance, if you are buying old pasture land, the basic landscape is probably covered with some type of sod-forming grass.  Common ones are coastal bermuda, fescue, or bahia grass.  These species are good  for grazing and hay production, but have to be removed in order to allow native weeds and grasses (quail habitat) to flourish .  In this case, ERADICATION of sod-grass is the goal, but in reality you will probably end up just gaining CONTROL of the acreage.  By this I mean that you will be able to convert most of the area back into quail habitat, but you will still have to treat trouble spots each year to keep the sod-grasses in check.  This will be a necessary cost in this situation, so remember this before you buy.
One way to off set the cost of converting sod-grass to quail habitat may be to rent the land out to a farmer who is willing to plant Round-Up ready corn or soybeans for a few years. This way you can receive an income from the farming while the farmer is removing the grass problem in the crop fields.  In these situations, you can often pay the farmer to chemically treat the sod-grasses on the field edges as well.  Once the sod-grasses have been eradicated from the field borders, you could then establish them in weeds and native grasses.

After a couple of years, the Round-Up ready farming practices will present you with the option to expand your quail program by converting some of the crop fields to quail habitat or expanding the width of your field borders.
If you are considering the purchase of active crop land, carry some of these thoughts with you.  Interview the landowner about past and present farm practices and evaluate the kind of vegetation that is present in fallow areas and field borders.
One last point about purchasing land for a quail project.  While looking at maps and talking with the seller, find out what is taking place on  the adjoining tracts.   Does the property you are considering back up to another quail project or is there a trailer park loaded with roaming house cats along your southern border?  Nearby activities can affect the success of your quail project, so ask about them before you buy.
I hope this discussion will be of assistance to those of you fortunate enough to purchase some land for a quail project.  Keep focused on your objective for buying the land, and what you will have to do after the purchase to achieve your goal.
There is a lot of land out there for sale but remember,  all that shimmers is not gold.

“There is every reason to believe that this strikingly beautiful color phase will remain a rarity in the wild in the future, as it has been in the past.” -  Herbert Stoddard

I was recently visiting a friend of mine named Harold Ray. He is known through out the field trial world as one of the best ever shooting dog trainers.  He has won eighty championships and was elected to the Field Trial Hall Of Fame in 2007.  Early in his career Harold was hired by Elvin and Inez Smith to be the trainer for Smiths English Setters.    Last year Mrs. Smith  passed away, and   Harold was asked to go through some of the records and materials she had accumulated.  During this process he came across a binder of very old issues of  American Field magazine.   Harold told me that one of them contained an article that discussed   “the red quail of the Ames plantation”.  At this point my ears perked up.

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Johnny Houses for Quail II video is a great resource for those wanting to learn more about the use of Johnny Houses on their properties. This DVD produced by Daybreak Productions for Quality Wildlife covers the basics, the season of usage, field placement, preparing the house, Stocking the house, Usage, Maintenance, Disinfection and End of Season cleanup. Not only is this video informative; but Wildlife Biologist Jim Evans makes it really fun to watch!

The DVD can be purchased here for $20.95

When I was a kid, my dad and I would go to an old farm near Hawkinsville, Georgia and just go hunting. We never planted a food plot or put out any feed, yet each year we harvested enough quail to include on the menu for the family Christmas dinner. So why do we need to provide feed sources for quail today?

There are many factors that I could bring up, but let me briefly touch on two : high deer populations and sod forming grasses.  I have been managing quail properties in the southeast for many years. Here it is common for me to see a proliferation of seed producing plants emerge during the spring on acreage that was control burned the previous winter. During the summer months these same plants are browsed heavily by deer.  Though there is still seed production for quail, it is greatly reduced.

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Managing Quail Fields is a DVD release from Quality Wildlife. This is a great resource for anyone raising, or managing the Quail Habitat on their property. Please watch the short preview below, and see how this can be a useful tool for your property! Wildlife Biologist Jim Evans makes this a really fun and a very informative video to watch.

The DVD can be purchased here for $20.95

This is Quality Wildlife’s first video, which gives a great overview of the history Quail Management, and reviews their products as well. We have included a short section on the history of Quail Management.

This DVD is included with the Covey Base Camp and available to anyone interested in learning more about our release system and products.

The DVD can be purchased here for $15.95

Recently, a client of mine said to me,“Jim, I have two questions for you. First, are my early release coveys running off the native birds? And second, can released quail reproduce?” These are probably the two most frequent questions I have had come my way during the past thirteen years of working on pre-season release quail projects. What’s really going on? Who are the real Survivors in the quail game?

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By

Thomas H. Eleazer, DVM Avian Disease Consultant

Introduction by Jim Evans , Consulting Biologist

Introduction

Dr. Tom Eleazer received his degree of Veterinary Medicine from the University of Georgia in 1958 and served Clemson University as a veterinary pathologist, studying poultry and game bird diseases for 31 years. Tom is still actively applying his skills as a poultry and game bird disease consultant. In the past he has served as president of the South Carolina Wildlife Federation, served on the advisory board for the Institute of Wildlife and Environmental Toxicology, and also as a member of the Wildlife & Freshwater Fisheries Advisory Board for the South Carolina Wildlife Commission. He was also instrumental in the development of the vaccine for “quail pox”. Now let’s hear what he has to say about the question: Are pen-reared quail a disease threat to wild birds?

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Over the years I have had the opportunity to work with many landowners that were devoted to having quail on their property. Questions about feeding quail seem to always arise at some point during my visit. For this reason I thought I would take a few minutes to share some thoughts with you on the subject and why for many of us, supplemental feeding is a necessity. Why do we even need to feed quail?As a youngster, my father and I hunted quail and never had to plant a food plot or put out any feed. The farms we hunted had residual crops scattered along the field edges and food never seemed to be factor. But I can also remember, during one of those hunts, when he took the time to show me the track of a game animal that was just starting to become re-established in the region – it was a deer track.Today you could leave half the crop in the field and still have nothing left for quail because the deer would have eaten it all. Also, deer browse on many of the native seed producing plants. This activity further reduces the abundance of natural winter food sources that quail need. In a situation like this, supplemental feeding is critical to sustain a winter quail population.

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Ok! It’s time to drop the tailgate of your truck and let me sit down with you for a few minutes to talk about what happens at a quail feeder during the course of a year. After we get finished, you may wish to review another article I wrote called, Methods of Feeding Quail . It discusses several ways to provide feed for quail and reviews the the role of food plots, the methods of spreading feed, and the use of feeders. Continue Reading »