The following message I borrowed from scripture. I have condensed it. I don’t want you thinking this is original … or that I am plagiarizing. I’m omitting many details so as not to blur the lines between Church and State.

 Basically, there is a parable that compares humans to different types of soil, or ground. Upon that ground, seeds are cast at random. Some fall on poor ground and never sprout. Some fall on shallow soils and start off with great enthusiasm, but eventually fail. Others are overtaken by weeds (though we know weeds are good for quail). And some fall on fertile soil, and grow and produce 60-fold the seed sown.

We need to sow seeds with enthusiasm and faith, whether that faith be spiritual in nature, or simply the faith that good things happen and hard work pays off. The basic message is: “Success is less about outcomes, than about the enthusiasm with which we work” (The Upper Room, December, 2010).

                 I think back over the hundreds, if not thousands, of landowners I have worked with in the last 20 years and I can see all types of “ground” in them. Some I wasted my breath on, but I could not known beforehand. So in good faith I continued my work. And, had I known beforehand, I would have continued anyway, so as not to judge … but also in hopes that something I said might sink in and strike a chord.

I have become discouraged many times in this profession. I have often asked myself, is anyone listening? Does anyone care? But every now and then the phone rings, and a landowner I may have visited five, maybe 10 years ago, and one I have not heard from since, is calling to say, “I know it has been a long time since we talked, but I wanted you to know I followed your recommendations and it took awhile, but I have 4 coveys of quail now.” 

Here is a quote that I received in an e-mail today from someone who had attended a quail class taught years ago:

“I had been fascinated with the idea of the quail since I attended a wildlife course as part of the hunter’s education instructor classes at Holiday Lake. It has been many years ago and I cannot remember the gentleman's name who talked about the quail in VA. Nevertheless, he was a very enthusiastic and jolly person - very passionate about the quail. His enthusiasm for them was contagious.”

 I don’t know if I taught this class or not. I did teach courses there and have been here for 16 years now. Regardless, whoever it was teaching that class – they had an impact whether they knew it or not.

When you give a talk to a group of 100 landowners you never really know which ones are what type of “soil.” But you can have faith that at least some of them do listen and take your message to heart. Furthermore, at least some of them will also share the message and “grow” it.

But thinking back I also wonder, “How did I portray my own enthusiasm for this work, for these species and for these plants they need?” Did I jump out of my vehicle and start rambling on about “early-succession habitats?” Kind of hard to love something titled as such, eh? Or did I immediately start looking for places where a cost-share program might apply and go into “salesman” mode? Did I convey how much I love the bobwhite quail as an individual organism? Did I take the time to identify numerous “weeds” to the landowner as living species and components of an ecosystem? Or did I simply say things like, “quail have to have weeds and brush?”

 I think maybe the most important thing we do as ambassadors for quail is reflect our love for them in our attitude and approach to working with landowners. It has taken me many years to learn this. In my early days I would schedule 5 or 6 site visits a day – because I and I alone was going to bring quail back. I am sure that all some landowners felt from me were my rushed nature and my need to get to the next property.

In your work don’t ruin the day with ambition. Share your love. As a landowner, become a disciple for the animals and habitats you value. Try to be the fertile soil that you are. Don’t let the message or enthusiasm end with you. Help grow it. As a quail hunter – don’t be selfish. What good are your coverts if you die and no young person is there to continue the tradition?

As a young boy in Pulaski County, Virginia, I recall deer still being pretty rare in many places. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard “old timers” talk about driving for miles just to see a deer track. One joked in the barbershop with my Dad, “Heck, I drove 25 miles just to talk to someone who had seen a deer track.” It wasn't really that bad, but success was easy to define. It meant more deer, which meant more deer hunters, which ultimately led to the white-tailed deer as being the primary driver of modern hunting. Much like the largemouth bass drives a large chunk of the fishing economy, deer put the “bucks” in hunting, literally and figuratively.

 And there have been much talked about successes with turkey, black bear, Canada geese, several duck species, and others. And I have heard so many times “they brought back deer and turkey, why can’t y’all bring back quail?”

It is an honest, albeit painful, question to hear repeatedly. I won’t go into all the reasons here, but when driving down the road in modern America, there is no shortage of deer habitat, or turkey woods ... and wetlands for waterfowl have been helped by over 25 years of programs designed to prevent draining and filling valuable habitats (since the Swampbuster provisions in the 1985 Farm Bill). Not to mention the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s system of refuges being largely being based around helping recover waterfowl populations. The USFWS has been working on conservation and restoration of waterfowl populations for over 75 years.

Driving down those same American roads where you have to be careful driving at night to avoid hitting a deer, quail habitat is hard to spot. Since bobwhite quail are a non-migratory species they fall under the purview of each state within which they range. The National Bobwhite Technical Committee and their range-wide plan for recovering wild bobwhites, the National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative, are helping to “gel” these states into concerted action. For the first time in history, thanks to NBCI, we have actual figures on the number of quail hunters nationally, and we are getting information on how much habitat is being created for quail within their range. It is a big task and will take time, but NBCI represents a giant step forward in recovering a non-migratory bird species. But can we use the same yardstick to measure success that we used for deer? For turkeys? For waterfowl? And if so, what level of population recovery and what level of quail hunting would qualify?

The old adage “success breeds success,” is rooted in truth.

Success builds confidence and credibility, no doubt. Much debate has raged among the scientific and managerial quail community about just what it takes to be declared a quail success … and then what to do with it once it happens.

There is a great deal of pressure being generated to better document and publicize quail management successes. Well – not pressure like when you don’t have enough money to pay the light bills – but perceived “job” pressure. (If your stomach is not growling so bad you can’t sleep, or if perhaps bullets are not whizzing over your head, you really don’t know what pressure is.)

And while no one has defined the exact criteria yet, the best verbalization of what it means is large scale quail population recovery that you could “stand in front of a group of quail hunters with a straight face and report.” I buy that. Agreed.

In Virginia, as in many states, we can report numerous quail successes on a landowner, or individual property scale. And while I am not a betting man, I’d bet a month’s wages that if you come to us with 500 acres of land and you manage it the way we tell you to manage it anywhere east of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, you will develop a wild quail population.

Will it be huntable? Yes – but on a limited basis. No wild quail population on a limited, isolated acreage can sustain heavy hunting pressure. Nevertheless, you could go from no quail, to 8 to 10 coveys of quail in 3 to 5 years. Problem is this takes a bunch of work to make it happen on purpose.

Back before I was born (pre-1962), most quail habitat was not isolated and much of it occurred by accident. When the quail coveys broke up in spring and started scurrying about looking for mates and nesting areas, they were likely to wind up somewhere pretty good no matter which direction they went.

Not anymore.

I could show you a bunch of pictures, some taken in 1951, some in 2009, that would make this apparent to even the most hardheaded “… man, nothin's changed on my farm in my lifetime” knucklehead in the country.

Sadly, comparing today’s landscape to that of the 1950s is even worse than comparing apples to oranges. More like apples to anvils – maybe. The modern bobwhite (picture a fashionably clad bobwhite tweeting on their G4 IPhone) needs even more contiguous acres and heavier cover than ever before to survive. This is why you hear or read about state agency, NGO and national efforts to restore quail referring to  ”focus areas,” “ priority counties,” “ target areas,” etc.

Landscape scale quail recovery does not happen one property at a time – it will take multiple properties and much concerted effort before it can occur.  And it needs something else – a little luck, or a little help from Above – depending on how you choose to view it.

In Virginia we have a county-wide “success story”.  In fact, our recent surveys show we have between a quail per 3 and 5 acres across this county’s landscape. Using an average 12 birds per covey (yeah, yeah – I know sometimes there are bigger coveys but through a year’s time, 12 is right) at a bird per 3 acres yields a covey per 36 acres - a very huntable density. And this county is being hunted for quail. Last year, one “old time bird hunter” found 141 coveys and killed 247 wild quail there. Our surveys show that populations are trending upward – though detection probabilities of small changes are low.

So why have we not written articles, gone on the Today Show and generally tooted out horns? The answers lie in why this county has quail and why we’d like to protect them.

This county, which will remain unnamed to protect the innocent and the guilty, exhibits every quality you would expect from one chosen as a high priority for quail recovery.

• First – it is still rural with a row crop agriculture and pine forestry- based economy.

• Second – the county has a long history of farmer and landowner participation in habitat cost-share programs like CP-33, CREP, and WHIP.  A large portion of Virginia’s allocated CP-33 acres are in this county.

• Third, there are several large private landowners who manage for wildlife using prescribed fire. One is perhaps the largest contiguous acreage of purposefully applied prescribed fire in Virginia.

• Fourth – there has been resurgence of interest in planting and managing long-leaf pine.

• Fifth – a well known NGO is managing a large property in this county for red-cockaded woodpeckers – again with fire.

• Sixth – this area has been hit by several severe hurricanes in the last decade – leveling large acreages of pine timber and increasing acres of clear-cut.

•  And lucky seventh – due to factors I don’t fully understand, most site-preparation herbicide treatment for pines in this area uses Arsenal™ alone (imazapyr based – legume friendly), rather than more comprehensive (broad spectrum) mixtures used in other parts of the state.

All this adds up to a quail per 3 to 5 acres – as much accidentally as on purpose. So is it right to declare a success?

I’m not comfortable with it for several reasons. While it is true we have promoted wildlife conservation programs in the area for years, they are not the primary reason for the “success.”  And, though we have had some influence on the landowners involved, they were largely conservation minded before we came along. In addition – this county did not start at ground zero.

Declaring success here is kind of akin to switching your favorite team to the Super Bowl Champion right AFTER the Super Bowl is over. But most difficult for me is the idea of attracting too much attention to a recovering quail population. The idea that the only reason we want to have success is so we can kill more of them is somehow troubling to me. If that is all these millions and millions of dollars we are spending is adding up to, God forgive me. Whether it is ever declared a true success or not, it is still encouraging to know that even in Virginia places like this can still exist.

Happy New year everybody!!! And what a fine year I hope it is for all of you. I hope you all enjoyed a great Christmas with your families, too. The New Year always brings with it a chance for a fresh start, for innovation and for anything but the dreaded status quo. For many years now we have relied on cost-share programs to stimulate wildlife conservation. They are a great tool to have, but the paradigm needs some reconfiguration in my most humble opinion (“who said so, I said so…” to steal from Robert D. Raeford).

You ever here of the proverbial alphabet soup of government program acronyms? That’s right, WHIP, CREP, CRP, CP-33, EQIP, FLEP, CSP, BMPs, RFT, …DING, BAT, DUMBO…well the last 3 were for laughs, unfortunately those prior are real programs (we are glad we have these programs, it’s just that the acronyms get to be confusing). It is a fact of life in our world that a lot of programs exist and each has its own red tape. Like it or not, the spending of government tax dollars must be well accounted for and applied fairly – thus the red tape.

In a 2008 survey we conducted prior to initiating our second quail recovery initiative, landowners told us loud and clear what the impediments were to enrolling in programs. Very simply – programs were too complicated and contracts too long (sounds like a wedding and a marriage – just kidding, Hon). And what did landowners want? Well on their list to Santa – they wanted free seed, money and then to be left alone. “Har, har, hardy, har, har –man, who doesn’t? Sign me up brother…today!!!”  All kidding aside, I am here to say that maybe there is a happy medium out there, and perhaps non-governmental organizations and foundations could be the ones to fill that role.

Before we get to how these organizations can help, let’s address what can be done to better work with existing government programs. One of the best ways is to hire biologists and have them on staff working in USDA Service Centers. Their primary purpose in life is to become the experts on all these programs so “the landowners don’t have to” to quote NRCS Virginia State Biologist Galon Hall. Many states have done this successfully … Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia, Ohio, and Missouri to name a few (don’t write and complain that I missed your state –I have a simple mind that can’t keep track of them all). In Virginia we have 5, which are a huge plus, but we could use 25. In Missouri I believe they have nearly 40, and this is a big part of why Missouri has had perhaps more success with quail recovery than all others.

But even with these biologists in place, many hundreds, if not thousands, of landowners simply do not want to participate in government programs. We can offer them technical assistance, but little else. And even more may not be adverse to programs; they simply are not interested in quail management. This begs a turn on the old “chicken or the egg” question – “which came first, money or interest in quail management.” I think sometimes we nerdy biologist types have a misperception that millions of people out there deeply yearn to have quail, if only the money were available for them to perpetually manage for them. But over time, I have found that there is less interest than there is money available.

Dr. Lenny Brennan recently wrote that bringing back bobwhites must rely on those who manage “purposefully” for quail. I don’t disagree completely, but would argue that it will take both purposeful and accidental quail management to engender a range-wide recovery. I am a field hack and I don’t pretend to be in the same league as Dr. Brennan with regards to quail knowledge. Very few people are. But, I do have a good feel what happens within the typical farming landscape and within rural communities. And I also know that it is human nature to strive to get the things they really want. I believe if more people truly wanted quail, there would be more quail. And here in lies one of the first and most important things non-governmental organizations and foundations could do to build a groundswell of people who want to “manage purposefully for quail.”

These groups have to get into the school classrooms, the Boy and Girl Scout camps, the youth church organizations and more, and reveal to the masses of young people what a cool bird a bobwhite is, why they’d be neat to have, and how they can be brought back to their property, or their parents’ or grandparents’ farm. In my opinion, intense interest in quail is more important than having money available to manage for quail. Trout Unlimited™ has a program called “Trout in the Classroom™.” They actually help school classes raise trout from eggs to trout ready for release into native habitats. This exact paradigm won’t work with quail, but there is room for work in developing appreciation for bobwhites. If I were a quail NGO, I would not sit back and say “that’s the state agencies’ role – let them do it.” Quail NGOs – how about some innovation? How about something new and bold along these lines?

In terms of money – another drawback to all government programs is that they work on a reimbursement basis. The landowners must front the bills, and are repaid on some percentage basis, or on a per acre basis, when work is completed and certified. This may not seem too bad, but sometimes those bills can be many thousands of dollars, and they must be “held” for weeks or months before reimbursement occurs. But NGOs and private foundations would not be limited by these restrictions.

What if a foundation could raise millions of dollars for habitat that could be paid to landowners up front, in the form of a simple grant – a one page application, with some fairly bold and restrictive guidelines for qualifying? Things like having a pretty high minimum acreage, maybe 250 or 500 acres (this is something government programs cannot do), perhaps also being in a conservation easement where benefits of habitats installed might be long term, or willingness to do large acreages, 50 or 100, or 150 enrolled (these properties could serve as sources for surrounding areas), and more.

All I am doing here is “thinking out loud”…trying to stimulate some thought. It is a New Year, and it is time for some changes in our thinking. I call again on the quail community at large to develop a mascot – the “Smokey Bear” of the quail world, something loveable, and instantly recognizable, especially to kids, and how about a new DS game – or a phone game application - what if “Angry Birds”, had been “Angry Quail?”