Quail and Flooding

My cousin has a large lease outside of Carrizo Springs in South Texas that has a ton of quail on it. It is primarily a deer lease and they might quail hunt a couple times a year. The one time they hunted this year, he said they moved 25 coveys in a morning and there were more quail than he has ever seen down there.

He said that it flooded down there recently and since then, he has not seen near the number of birds that he had been seeing and thought that the flooding had killed a bunch of the quail. Long question short, will flooding kill birds? It seems like they would be smart enough to get into a tree, but he seems to think that a lot of them drown. He said that he is seeing 1/4 as many birds when he drives the roads and corns for deer. Thoughts?

They could have moved.

Could have got sick and died.

Steady prolonged rain is really bad on young birds. Susceptible to pneumonia. Birds stress after two to three days of no food. Flood, snow, ice bad.

So how does the western part of the state hold good amounts of birds, when it gets cold as heck, dry as a bone, and i dunno if tumbke weeds count as food?

I was on a lease a kennedy several years ago lots of birds opening weekend, bitter cold and snow next week then no birds. I believe southtexas birds do not handle elements as well as north texas birds but I do not have enough data to prove.

I would guess that quail do not handle extreme weather changes well. I don't think that it is the cold or snow as much as it is a drastic change. I don't believe that I would have found Bobwhite quail in Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas during the winter if cold was the only culprit.