Missouri - Howard County farmer’s story reflects quail resurgence

[Len Backus]

The future of Missouri bobwhites is in private landowners’ hands.

FAYETTE, Mo.-The bobwhite quail has a special place in Oran Boulden’s heart, thanks to spending his formative years on a farm in Howard County. His love for the jaunty little game bird makes him a natural ally for soil and wildlife conservationsts. It also makes him and like-minded farmers the future of quail in Missouri.

Boulden, a regional representative for Case-New Holland farm and construction equipment, came home to Missouri three years ago and took over management of his family’s 160-acre farm north of Fayette. He had been gone for 17 years, much of it in Nebraska, where he hunted quail and pheasant every weekend. Some seasons, he and his hunting buddies harvested as many as 300 quail.

He brought his English pointers with him when he moved back to Missouri but soon discovered that even the relatively modest 100-quail-per-season hunting of his youth had vanished. Not that the family farm had ever been much good for hunting. Boulden recalls that even in his youth he had to look elsewhere for quail.

“When I was in college in the early ‘80s we hunted quail heavily in this area,” recalls Boulden. “I never hunted the farm, because there was never any birds there. I think it was habitat. If it wasn’t trees or crops it was fescue. There were some tree lines taken out, and our farming practices consisted of heavy tillage. We disked twice in the spring and chisel plowed in the fall.”

If anything, the quail situation was worse when he returned home. It wasn’t hopeless, though. Bobwhites still called from an abandoned railroad right-of-way north of the family farm. Then he found Brent Vandeloecht.

Vandeloecht is a private land conservationist with the Missouri Department of Conservation. It is his job to help landowners fulfill their conservation ambitions. Boulden called him even before moving back to Missouri, looking for ways to bring quail back to his family farm.

“I’m a quail hunter myself,” says Vandeloecht. “Wildlife management in general is a passion for me. That’s what I do on weekends. I’m always doing something to try to improve the wildlife habitat on my own property.”

Boulden’s farm actually had fairly good potential for quail habitat. About three-quarters of the land consisted of small fields. There were two 4- to 5-acre hayfields, four row-crop fields ranging from 15 to 19 acres and two fields of 6 and 7 acres enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). A sprinkling of woodlots made up the remaining quarter of the farm.

Quail thrive in a patchwork of small fields and woodland. A mix of weedy edges and crops provide food. Diverse grasslands create nesting areas, and a brushy edge between fields and woods provide shelter from weather and predators. Such diverse landscapes were the norm during the bobwhite quail’s heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, but they are increasingly rare today.

While the Boulden’s farm had potential, it lacked some key elements of quail habitat. For one thing, it did not have the kind of grassland suited to quail nesting. And while it had a mix of forest and open land, the dividing line between forest and field was razor sharp. There were almost no brush piles or shrubby cover in between.

Together, Boulden and Vandeloecht developed a plan to remedy these deficiencies. To make the plan affordable, they tapped resources provided under the federal farm bill.

The CRP paid for Conservation Practice 33 (CP-33, habitat buffers), planting native, warm-season grasses around the edges of crop fields. These strips of little bluestem and sideoats grama grass and native broadleaf plants make excellent quail nesting habitat. They also help prevent loss of valuable topsoil to erosion.

Erosion was a real problem along the creek running through the Boulden farm. In this area, CRP paid for Conservation Practice 21 (CP-21, riparian filter strips), planting native, warm-season grasses even more densely than under CP-33, but still good quail habitat.

Boulden and his son, Jordan, created patches of woody cover for quail at the edges of cropland and CRP fields by felling small trees, a practice known as edge feathering. They got help from the Conservation Department converting some of the fescue grass on their farm to native, warm-season grasses. By the end of their first year’s labor they began to see results.

“I was out on the tractor in October of 2006 planting wheat and flushed about 12 quail,” said Boulden. “I was really excited. I called Brent right away and said, ‘Hey, I saw a covey of birds!’ That is the first time I have seen birds on the property since 1980.”

In the spring of 2007, while working near some of the edge-feathering, Boulden saw a cock bobwhite and two hens nesting around the new cover.

More recently, he has been a little discouraged by tough breaks from the weather. He has not seen any quail since last year’s late-spring freeze and December’s devastating ice storm. But Vandeloecht says the farm now has what it takes to sustain quail through hard times.

“They did a really good job of establishing their warm-season grasses and got a really good stand,” he said. “They have done about 2 acres of edge feathering, which is quite a bit of work on a 160-acre farm. He’s got some high-quality woody cover and plenty of nesting habitat. I think his birds should make it.”

Boulden and his son continue to work at creating quail habitat. They use no-till farming practices, and they leave 15- to 20-foot strips of soybeans and other crops standing beside edge-feathered areas to ensure that quail have food close by when sitting out winter storms. They plan to spray herbicide to reduce fescue and get legumes growing around edge feathering, and they are working to get better stands of warm-season grasses growing on levees. Finally, they are working with Conservation Department foresters to develop a forest stewardship plan for the farm.

“Quail habitat didn’t disappear overnight, and it doesn’t come back overnight,” said Vandeloecht. “It takes time, and you have to keep at it every year, but the Bouldens are gaining on it. They are in it for the long haul.”

Vandeloecht said more than 90 percent of Missouri’s total acreage is privately owned. Consequently, the future of bobwhite quail in the Show-Me State hinge on the efforts of people like the Bouldens.

“Creating quail habitat on conservation areas and all the other public land in the state can’t bring back the bobwhite,” said Vandeloecht. “We can offer help, but it is going to take a lot of folks like Oran and Jordan to make it happen.”

-Jim Low-

[shorty]

Thank You Len, This is a topic near and dear to my heart! I've been a bird hunter since way back and the current state of affairs has been troubling to say the least. My farmer friends are now planting crops in every square inch of dirt they can lay their hands on, with little or no cover left for wildlife. I'm glad to hear of those who are bucking the trend.