I attended the Park Cities Quail Check Presentation and Reception meeting last night, Thursday 8-21-14 in Dallas at Collectors Covey on Lovers Lane. The Park Cities Quail is the Dallas Chapter of Quail Coalition and they have a fund raiser dinner each year to raise money for quail research in Texas. They have their dinner each year in March and it usually sells out. At the 2014 dinner they raised $1,000,500.00 for quail research. Any one wanting to help this organization help the return of healthy quail to Texas should join the Park Cities Quail.

Good news the researchers last night said quail populations in Texas at this time are the best they have seen for years.

I was there as well, lots of money given out to several groups who are making great strides in both identifying the causes of the decline and trying to figure out some solutions

They're pretty active in the Houston area. I help out with a few of their donated hunts.

It is amazing to me that of all the money raised and spent on the decline and solutions for the rebound for quail, nothing has moved the needle like rainfall and weather conditions. It just proves to me that Mother Nature is powerful and cannot be bought. She will act on her time.

NorthTXBirdhunter- You are correct in that without favorable conditions it is hard for birds to thrive. However, I am afraid that rainfall alone is not the answer, if you recall in 2010 we have above average rainfall across the rolling plains, and people were seeing young birds all summer, but by November they were nowhere to be found. Why did they just disappear? What can we do to prevent it from happening again? These are the questions that the Quail Coalition and the organizations it supports are trying to answer.
Also on the topic of weather, this past winter was unusually harsh, with one particular snow that had a foot or more of snow on the ground for over a week in parts of the rolling plains. It so happens that at this time Quail Tech was doing a study on the effectiveness of broadcast feeding of milo(Park Cities Quail funded this study). This study was done on the 6666 Ranch, alternating fed and not fed sections, the study revealed that the mortality rates were 10X higher on the Non Fed as opposed to the fed sections. Conventional wisdom held that feeding had no effect on birds.
Link is here:

Quail Tech

The list goes on and on as to the positive impacts that the Quail Coalition chapters have had in this state for wild quail. I am sure Bill has some good examples in his part of the world.

I hear lots of people say "well they are gone and not coming back" or "there is nothing we can do about it" and that simply isn't true, not everyone is willing to take what the world throws at them lying down. The birds may go away forever, but you can be assured that those involved in the Quail Coalition chapters and the researchers that they support and work with, will do everything they can to prevent it. Somebody has to stand and fight for Mr. Bob.

Raymond67 Please say hello to me if you go to the next gathering in October I would enjoy meeting you. Consider coming out to see what I offer,

Walter

Thanks Bill for your support