Buck Hollow Sporting Goods - click or touch to visit their website Midwest Habitat Company

Finally got one...

Daver

Daver

PMA Member
Quail, that is! :D I have had my farm for about 12 years now and for one reason or the other, I had never shot either a quail or a pheasant there. We had a FEW when I bought the place and then through the years we had even fewer it seemed. I really never even tried to go after them though since there were so few.

But starting about 3 years ago I decided to upgrade the habitat for upland birds too, not just deer and turkey. So, we started trapping, something I hadn't done since I was a kid, we planted milo, I converted some crappy brome CRP segments to switchgrass and so forth.

Voila, we now have quail and pheasants! I actually went out hunting for birds Saturday AM, but did not get any shots off, although birds were spotted. My two hunting partners had a little success though, one quail and one rooster were reduced to bag Saturday. Undeterred, I went out by myself Sunday AM and got one regal male Bobwhite! One shot, one quail, that's how I roll! :D

Our family dog, pictured, hasn't had much opportunity to bird hunt, she is 5 years old, but I took her out with me and she did pretty good for not knowing anything. She certainly stayed close by and enjoyed barreling through the tall grass, etc, and I think she was smelling them some too.

I plan on at least a couple more quail excursions this year as I have at least 4 separate coveys around, each with 10-25 birds. I also figure I need a few more to make a meal, one quail in the bag does not a meal make! :D

161-first_bob_2013.jpg
 
Built it and they will come!! Great example of how upland birds can be brought back!!

Did you open their craw and see what they were feeding on??
 
letemgrow said:
Built it and they will come!! Great example of how upland birds can be brought back!!

Did you open their craw and see what they were feeding on??
Click to expand...

I only cleaned the one you see in the picture and its' crop was JAMMED with seeds from the milo that I have on the farm now. My only concern is that the seed heads are dwindling now and I hope I have enough groceries for these great birds to keep their bellies full all winter.

I have watched both my milo and EW seeds go away fast over the past few weeks. I planted about 4 acres of milo, but due to the prolonged wet spring followed by the Sahara Desert drought this summer, I have A LOT of foxtail where I should have more milo. I would guess that I got one acre of milo where I should have four, with the remaining three acres being some of the tallest foxtail I have ever seen.

If those birds can survive on foxtail seeds as well as they do on milo then they should get through the winter just dandy. I hate to brag, but I have some of the best foxtail fields anywhere this year! :D Some of it was truly 6' tall, and thick too.

I had sprayed to kill the brome in the late spring AND then laid down a pretty good amount of fertilizer in advance of having Dbltree's son Jesse come to drill in the milo and EW. Only by the time the rain died down enough to let the drill in the field there had been about 3 weeks of time elapsed, which was apparently plenty of time to let the foxtail get a start, and away it went.

So when I say I have a milo field, I really mean that I have foxtail field, with some milo mixed in. :D

I continue to improve the habitat each year, I just had Jesse drill some switch in three separate, but small, areas. Next spring I will plant milo right next to these spots and expand the micro habitat concept I have going for the birds.
 
Nice job! It's always good to hear bird hunting stories. I sometimes feel like the game birds in Iowa extinct!
 
I always love hearing about that. I hunt in Iowa County and we have some very good switch grass to hunt. I went out Saturday morning for about an hour, just me and my dog and killed two roosters and two quail. Altogether I saw well over 50 pheasant and there was around 15 quail in the covey.
 
That is awesome...birds sure took a hit up here in SD this year as well. Sounds like it will be a couple years probably until the numbers get back to where they want them. I know back home where I grew up (nw iowa) that the birds have started to make a little bit of a comeback. Hopefully we can continue to see more and more posts just like this one. Great work Daver!
 
Congrats Daver...great to see landowners who are trying to keep this great Iowa tradition alive :way: Since an early age I've enjoyed shooting upland game, and this thread brought back memories of a number of years back when my two brother-in-laws and I used to make annual trips to SW Iowa on Thanksgiving weekend to hunt pheasants and quail. The pheasants were just a bonus, as we could always get those back home up north, but the quail were the attraction. Not intending to hijack the thread, but here's a pic I dug up from a typical day afield back then...the year was 1995, and this was in the general area of Creston. The dog was a stubborn old male GSP I had at the time named Earl, but he was a great bird dog :way: And yes, my BIL and I both had fair bit more hair then than today :D



P.S. I apologize for the BIL's ISU sweatshirt...been trying to reform him to Hawkeye status for a number of years with no success :D

NWBuck
 
Awesome been seeing a few coveys on our place this year. I bet if we spanked the coons and opossum's hard for a year or two they would really take off.
 
Daver said:
I only cleaned the one you see in the picture and its' crop was JAMMED with seeds from the milo that I have on the farm now. My only concern is that the seed heads are dwindling now and I hope I have enough groceries for these great birds to keep their bellies full all winter.

If those birds can survive on foxtail seeds as well as they do on milo then they should get through the winter just dandy. I hate to brag, but I have some of the best foxtail fields anywhere this year! :D Some of it was truly 6' tall, and thick too.

I continue to improve the habitat each year, I just had Jesse drill some switch in three separate, but small, areas. Next spring I will plant milo right next to these spots and expand the micro habitat concept I have going for the birds.
Click to expand...

Hunting foxtail patches for pheasants has been VERY productive for me. Not sure exactly how attractive they are to quail, but I've found coveys in foxtail patches too.
 
Nice job on the quail and helping with the habitat! I just got an email from sdgfp about a meeting they held discussing the loss of pheasant habitat in the state and they let the public share ideas on how they could help improve it. Sounded like they got a lot of good feedback. Not sure if iowa does anything like this but it sounds like a good lead to follow.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom