Scout's Paw Tracks

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Dogs have easy part; Humans struggle to keep birds

Reprinted from the Jackson Sun.  Read this article at the Jackson Sun.

By PETE WICKHAM

GRAND JUNCTION - The National Championship Field Trial is 107 years old. Older than the Masters, younger than the Kentucky Derby - and in this close-knit world of bird dogs, quail and the crazed humans who follow them over the river and through the woods, bigger than any Super Bowl.

Yet for the last 10 years, operators at venerable Ames Plantation have worked like the devil to make sure that the top bird dogs in the world have had birds to find. It hasn’t been easy.

“It’s the biggest challenge we have, and frankly everyone involved in bird dogs and quail hunting have,” said Rick Carlisle, superintendent of the 18,500-acre Ames facility, which spills over both Hardeman and Fayette counties.

Throughout the South, he said, populations of the game bird have been dropping about 4 percent a year. “There were years here in the ‘90s when a day of finding two to three covey of quail was a big thing,” he said. “And it’s that way everywhere that a competition like this is run.”
For the past four years, Ames Plantation has worked to help the process along, raising its own quail to restock the population along its two 11-mile courses. Last year, 3,200 of the birds were released into the wild.

“We get ‘em in when they’re 3 days old,” said James Morrow, who has been on the plantation staff for 30 years. “We put their pens around growing feed crops, so they can feed in a manner that will allow them to adapt to the wild.”

The birds are put out in coveys of 20 throughout the plantation, with food and water nearby.

“We also go throughout the area and plant small stands of milo that they can feed on as they scatter,” Morrow said. “There’s a lot of work involved in doing that. It’s 200 plots (each about a half-acre to an acre) spread all over this place.”

Still, with that edge, 70 percent of the birds never make it to the field trials.

The biggest problem?

“The Cooper Hawk. It’s on the endangered species list, so they’re protected ... but the hawk’s favorite meal is quail,” Carlisle said.

“Believe me, we’ve talked to federal officials about it more than once.”

Dog trainer Allen Vincent added, “quail is on the food chain of just about every predator - snakes, coyotes (of which there are plenty on the Ames grounds), hawks they’re pretty vulnerable birds.”

That leads to the one defense mechanism allowed by law.

“About five years ago, the courses we run in the Field Trials were 52 percent timber. The hawks live in trees, and the quail nest on the ground,” Carlisle said. “Since then we’ve trimmed back about 1,200 acres of trees to get it closer to the ideal course ratio of 25 percent trees/75 percent open ground.”

Carlisle said research is going on “everywhere from here to Florida, where the quail used to be so plentiful. No one really has the answer. We’ve got some ways to fight, but no answer.”

- Pete Wickham
Originally published February 19, 2006