Restocking quail

ICMCumin

New member
(apologize - long post)
The previous thread about calling in quail rattled my mind a little about a similar topic - restocking quail.

I have a 550 acre lease in central Texas about halfway between San Antonio and Houston. There are hogs, coyotes, racoons, skunks, deer, turkeys, dove and armadillos, but no quail. I have been told by the locals that there used to be quail in the area, but they are no longer here. I have not heard one quail whistle in all the times I have been on the lease.

I would rather quail hunt than eat when I'm hungry so I joined Quail Unlimited and sent them an e-mail asking for some information about bringing the birds back to the area.

I was told that this is a very difficult task and the only way to do it was to build/buy a covey house ( a small cage that allows them to enter through a small hole in the bottom and fly out the top the next AM) so the birds can roost in safety at night.

You have to stock one male quail in a cage in the covey house, which will call the covey back to the safety of the house each night - that domestic birds do not fly back to the roost as wild birds do, they walk back, leaving a scent trail that all the aforementioned predators and varmints will follow for a midnight snack.

QU also told me that predation has to be dramatically reduced in order to make it work, which I am in the process of doing - this is the fun part - although I am not shooting the hawks and Mexican Eagles that would use my quail as hors d'ouevres.

I also called the Texas Parks and Wildlife folks and was told that stocking domestic birds, be they quail or turkey would not work. That there was simply too much pressure to make this work with domestic birds, but that it might work if wild birds were brought in.

Me being kind of a thickhead, wonder why it worked so well in the MidWest with pheasants and it wouldn't work here in God's Country with Bobwhites. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif

Has anybody out there got any experience with this?

Thanks and Happy New Year.
 
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