Enough Birds? Enough Land?

A property that I routinely hunt dove and duck on also has some quail.

The ranch is approximately 2000 acres. It has 12+ tanks and a large 35-75 acre lake depending on water level. It is a mix of rolling hills with mesquite and oaks. It also has two large fields each about 100 or so acres. One is hay grazer and the other wheat.

We have been routinely jumping coveys with 20+ birds while driving to scout tanks and while dove hunting.

I have very little experience hunting quail. It's been really nice to see them on the property. How do you know or decide that you have a large enough population to hunt and then how do you know how many you should take?

We don't want to over hunt it when we do decide to try and hunt them.

Land owner isn't wanting to hunt them just yet but mentioned maybe hunting them next year.

Thanks

Sounds as if that is up to your land owner. I'm not as mad at them as I once was.

I just don't want to hurt the population. Just wanting to know if based on the information I gave someone could have an idea on how many the property is holding and if that is a hunt-able population

If you have several 20+ bird coveys, I wouldn't be concerned with taking a bird or 2 from each covey. If you have access to dogs I would put on a hunt and do a camera shoot to at least assess what you have in way of numbers. I would hunt the tanks, and the edges of the hay grazer. Hay grazer is a bird magnet this time of year. Those 2 areas would give a pretty good assessment of what you have. Hunting with a camera is almost as good for me as with a gun. It's not as fulfilling for the dog though. I'm like Bill, I'm not as mad at them as I used to be.

Bingo about the hay grazer. A friend and I watched 14 coveys cross the road to a hay grazer field one time. It was ripe for the taking. We turned the dogs lose and went after them. We killed one quail.

Yes on the hay grazer if it was allowed to go to seed and not bailed.