H. Lee Stribling and D. Clay Sisson

Many landowners tend to view weedy, fallow fields as idle and unproductive. The temptation is to mow them or plant an agricultural crop or pine trees. However, AAES studies are showing that landowners who want to promote quail production should view these types of fields as highly productive. There IS a crop growing in these fields—that crop is weeds, bugs, and quail broods!

Southern quail populations experience a high rate of annual mortality, which means that any given season’s quail crop is made up largely of birds that were hatched and raised the previous summer. Because of this, 65-80% of the fall/winter population will be comprised of birds experiencing their first hunting season, while only 20-35% will be adults. Proper management of these young quail is vital to ensuring a plentiful crop each hunting season, and proper management hinges on providing proper habitat and foodstuffs.

Research has demonstrated that young chicks (broods) rely heavily on insects to meet the high protein requirements of rapid early growth. Studies in several states have investigated insect abundance in different habitat types and under different management schemes; however, few studies have examined habitat use by quail broods in the pine woods and fields of the Deep South.

Two previous studies used radio transmitters on adult quail to track broods in the southeastern Costal Plain. In 1982 researchers from Auburn reported a preference for small cultivated feed patches by 12 hens with broods in Alabama. In 1993 researchers reported, after studying 22 broods in North Florida, that quail preferred recently-burned upland pine woods to raise their broods.

As part of a large, comprehensive study of quail biology, management, and hunting called the Albany Area Game Management Project, personnel of Auburn University’s Department of Zoology and Wildlife Science have been intensively investigating bobwhite brood habitat use for the past several years in two properties near Albany in Southwest Georgia. A primary objective of the study is to examine habitat use by a large sample of brood-rearing adult bobwhites and to compare insect abundance in these areas to other habitat types.

The two study areas together encompass 31,000 acres south of Albany, Georgia. Both areas are highly productive and support some of the highest quail densities in the South. The habitat on these two properties consists primarily of mature pine forests (maintained in an open condition by a long history of frequent prescribed burning) interspersed with a network of small fields and woodland “bird patches.” The field networks are maintained by a system of rotational farming of corn and seasonal disking in October. This keeps these fields in a “weedy” condition, involving predominantly common ragweed and partridge peas. Small feed patches, usually consisting of grain sorghum, browntop millet, or corn, are planted in early summer or late spring throughout the pine woodlands.

Since the spring of 1992, the project’s research field staff has radio-tagged more than 1,000 adult bobwhites, allowing researchers to obtain more than 2,000 telemetry locations on 120 young quail broods. Additionally, insect volumes on all the available habitats in these study areas were measured by taking more than 10,000 sweeps with insect sweep nets.

In each of the four years studied and on both study areas, the preferred brood habitat was fallow “weed fields.” Close to 80% of all broods were raised in this type of habitat. These weedy, fallow fields were preferred by quail to corn fields, woodland bird patches, and burned pine woods.

Analysis of the insect volumes in each of these areas explains clearly why this was the case: THAT’S WHERE THE BUGS ARE (see the figure). While little difference exists in bird patches and burned woods, fallow fields clearly produce more insects than any other area. The lowest volume of insects occurred in current-year corn fields.

Using this information, researchers then compared hunting success with the percentage of fallow fields on the hunting courses they were studying. It was no surprise that the hunting courses with the highest percentage of fallow fields had the best hunting, and vice-versa. Furthermore, these field habitats appeared to be even more important in marginal or poor reproductive years. In good years with optimal summer weather conditions, all the hunting courses might be productive. However, in the bad years when weather was dry, quail populations on the courses with a higher percentage of fields maintained better than the heavily wooded courses.

Previous research, which dates as far back as the 1930s, suggests that the balance of forest land and open land is vital to good quail production. In the past, a 50% open:50% forested ratio has often been recommended. In this study, only one of seven hunting courses in this study has more than 30% fields. Recently Auburn researchers helped design a quail area from scratch. Several large agricultural fields were being converted to hunting land and AU researchers recommended establishing this area in 60% woodland and 40% fields. The best situation appears to be a system of well-distributed fields with each field being between five and 10 acres in size.

The way these fields are managed ultimately determines their importance as quail production areas. Having 30-50% of the acreage in open land that is improved pasture or bottom obviously is no help to the quail population. These studies indicate that some sort of combination of rotational farming and fall/winter disking is ideal. Fallow, weedy, buggy areas are ideal, regardless of the method used to get them. Not only are these areas crucial for broods, they also are heavily used by adults in the spring and summer. Nesting hens require a lot of insect foods and these fields are the first places to get “buggy” in the spring. They also provide cover when the woods are burned in March. In addition, having significant acreage of small, scattered fields also helps the hunting success, especially if part of each field is disked out in the fall because these edges help hunters stop birds that run.