Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 09:38:39 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: "Frederick W. Fallon" Subject: Re: quail decline MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit jim brighton wrote: > > With all the talk of the waning bobwhite population on Osprey I thought > I'd throw in an interesting bit that I was told a couple weeks ago. I was > talking with a friend of mine who has been hunting the shore for the past 40 > years and I mentioned the decline of Bobwhites and asked if he thought > hunting Bobwhites should be banned. His answer was very interesting. He > agreed that the quail population on the shore has probably been overhunted > but he said the major decline of the species is due to the explosion of Wild > Turkey in the area. This shocked me. Having grown up and lived most of my > ...... > > _________________________________________________________________ > The trouble with this theory is that Bob-whites have been declining steadily for 20+ years, whereas the Wild Turkey population has exploded just in the last 5 years or so. Many suggested cures for the problem propose hunting something else (turkey, fox,...) instead of not hunting quail. So far no one has proposed legal hunting of feral cats and dogs, probably a more effective strategy. Fred Fallon Bowie ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================