Catalpa trees……,,

[Dawgbite]

The explosion of wild quail out from under foot is one of the great experiences in nature. They've disappeared from rural setting largely thanks to changes in agricultural practices.

Quail require a series of adjacent environments, and annual or semi-annual burning provides one of the three. Pronounced hedgerows provide another one of the three. With wall-to-wall row cropping getting rid of hedgerows and the discontinuing of small pasture-keeping meaning fields that were regularly burned no longer being burned, the quail habitat just isn't there, even though many areas that "used to" have coveys of quail and that look just like they always did no longer have them.

Quail have lots of enemies - everything under the sun, from fire ants to coyotes to little mites that get in their eyes kills them - so there no one neat answer to "where are the quail," but the loss of habitat has always seemed the most elemental to me.

Mr. Jimmy Bryan has turned a big swath of Blackland Prairie into a wild quail factory and experiment station northeast of West Point - plus it's a really nice place. Check them out at Prairie Wildlife.

They do preserve quail shoots, but they're growing a lot of wild quail too. Scores and scores of healthy coveys on the place. They do a lot of shotgun games there too - if you like skeet or sporting clays but haven't tried helice, you owe it to yourself to take a group of buddies and go do that sometime.

I’ve been a hunter since I got my first Daisy BB gun and I’ve killed every that the state of Ms has to offer. I honestly got bored with hunting ten or so years ago and essentially quit. I had the opportunity to go pheasant hunting about four years ago and was hooked. There’s nothing like it except maybe quail hunting. Watching a good dog work, a bird the size of a small chicken flushing from two feet away. I really look forward to my one week of hunting pheasant a year. I highly recommend it if you ever get the opportunity.

 

[Car Ramrod.sixpack]

One of the interesting off-the-record things I've heard from the folks out there is about the hunters' enthusiasm for wild quail hunting. They've had occasionally-huntable wild quail populations for some time, but it turns out lots of people who say how much they miss hunting wild quail didn't remember how much harder you have to hustle to do that.

Wild quail coveys don't always hold their ground like they do in the Currier & Ives oil paintings - they move, they walk quickly, they retreat - they flush way before a hunter is standing over them. Hunting wild quail is a lot like hunting coveys of wild Comanches, but for the fact they don't shoot back. If a covey is never molested, I'm sure it would be more apt to sit still, but once a covey has been shot into a time or two, the birds get educated just like wild turkeys.

Getting a limit of quail from wild coveys requires a good bit of hustle and giddy-up on the part of the hunters, who'll be shooting faster targets that flush from farther away, that are harder to find and point and a lot of trouble to bring to the bag. No dawdling tolerated.

You are correct about wild quail hunting being a lot work. A few hunters I know that hunt wild quail have started using a flushing dog to get the the birds up along with pointers.

 

[Nugdawg]

There are a lot of things I haven't seen since I was a kid, catawpa trees with the worms are one of them. I grew up in the country and still own acreage out in the country. These things used to be all over the place, now....not so much.

other things that seem scarce or gone:

honesuckle
blackberries growing wild
roley poleys
those orange and black crickets that my grandma called soldier boys
fireflies/lightning bugs

My camp in Leake County has honeysuckle and we have a huge wild blackberry crop most years and this year was tons. Made me miss my granny who made the best cobbler. I grew up with Catawpa trees around our pond in Lincoln County and man they were automatic bite on a fish.

On another note, I love sitting on the porch at the camp and hearing the whipporwill across the lake late in the evening. Man that takes me back home back in the day! Ha

 

[horshack.sixpack]

Ceratomia catalpae, the catalpa sphinx

Glad my grandfather isn’t around to hear such nonsense!***

 

[MagnoliaHunter]

Wow thanks for the info. Might keep that I mind.

You are correct about wild quail hunting being a lot work. A few hunters I know that hunt wild quail have started using a flushing dog to get the the birds up along with pointers.

A good dog does both.

 

[PBRME]

2 years ago I had a bunch on my tree. Not as many as in the past, but still enough. Last year there wasn’t many. Checked last weekend, and didn’t see a sign of any.

 

[40 acres and a mule]

A good dog does both.

I quail hunted with my dad when I was a kid. There was a good number of wild quail back then. I never went hunting without a good pointer. I don't see how you could do it without one.

 

[40 acres and a mule]

My camp in Leake County has honeysuckle and we have a huge wild blackberry crop most years and this year was tons. Made me miss my granny who made the best cobbler. I grew up with Catawpa trees around our pond in Lincoln County and man they were automatic bite on a fish.

On another note, I love sitting on the porch at the camp and hearing the whipporwill across the lake late in the evening. Man that takes me back home back in the day! Ha

Wipporwills are a nightly occurence at my house. I love the sound.

 

[Ozarkdawg]

Something else gone around here, Monarch butterflies.

 

[Pookieray]

There are a lot of things I haven't seen since I was a kid, catawpa trees with the worms are one of them. I grew up in the country and still own acreage out in the country. These things used to be all over the place, now....not so much.

other things that seem scarce or gone:

honesuckle
blackberries growing wild
roley poleys
those orange and black crickets that my grandma called soldier boys
fireflies/lightning bugs

I got it all except the roley poleys. wild blackberries everywhere.

 

[Pookieray]

Dang hadn't thought about those brown and orange grasshoppers in awhile. what about wild plums? used to be everywhere. Persimmon tress also.
yep and the Bob White are nowhere to be found.

I got a bazillion persimmon trees. I mowed down about 30 early part of the cutting season. Left one that came up from seed in my back yard. They grow fast.

 

[Pookieray]

It's not possible for folks coming along now to appreciate how there used to be no deer. I grew up in Lee County and, if anyone saw a deer track somewhere, it was a big deal. There was no turkey season because there were zero turkeys. All my mentors had once kept bird dogs but by the time I came along in the late 70s, early 80s, the quail were growing very scarce around home.

My wife’s grandfather from Ripley, actually Shady Grove, told me onetime he was quail hunting , probably in 60’s or 70’s, and saw a deer. Local paper interviewed him about seeing a deer.

 

[tcdog70]

In the 70thru early 90s we bird dogs and hunted(quail) 3 times a week. we hade great bird dogs. It was nothing to find 6-10 coveys of birds a day. we walked and covered many miles-but we also hunted on horses. I had really good bird dogs and excellent horses--now they are just awesome memories of a time past. I think maybe fireants and coyotes had a lot to do with their demise .Never hear the Bob white whistle anymore--sad.

 

[was21]

I thought it was catawpa. Haven’t seen one since my grandpa had one in Vicksburg. Used to get tons of bait from it. He’d freeze them and thaw them when needed.

There was one in Vicksburg on the edge of the military park that I remember.

 

[was21]

We would cut them in half. They stayed on the hook very well. All species of fish craved them but mostly Chanel cats

Bluegill bream liked them as well.

 

[horshack.sixpack]

There was one in Vicksburg on the edge of the military park that I remember.

This set of grandparents lived down Lightcap, off Halls Ferry. Had two trees by the clothesline out back.