OK Guys give me your thoughts on the bad ants. I live in East Texas and the old Timers say the Ants got the Quail in ET. In Hunting Quail in Coleman and Snyder areas the past three season the bird numbers are way down and I have been seeing lots of fire ant mounds on the leases I hunt. What you guys think?

Tom - I don't think it is that simple. Predators and ants are part of the problem, but loss of habitat and changes in land use are also factors.

Here is a link to a good website on the issue:

Team Quail

I agree with patf - they contribute, no doubt, but are only a portion of the problem.

My limited experience in Texas tells me it's land use (over grazing etc) but mostly about rain, and when you get it.

I feel like the fragmentation of land has been the biggest problem. Also how people are using the land, you don't see much native habitat like when I was growing up. Everyone wants to have a nice looking pasture with coastal bermuda with clean fence rows.

Studies have showed that fire ants have had little to no effect on ground-dwelling animals. Conditions have to be near perfect for quail to survive and reproduce, enough rain to bring up the worms to feed the young, plenty of seed on the ground and "untouched" earth, land that hasn't been plowed and farmed. Quail have tons of predators, skunks, snakes, coyotes, hawks, etc etc.

I agree with all of the above.

I believe that the fire ants are having a tremendous affect on all of the wildlife in the Rolling Hills area of Texas. I hunt in Callahan County and since they showed up app. three years ago the wildlife in my area has steadly declined.This year we don't even have many wasps or yellow jacket nests in the trees or barns because of the ants presence in the canopy area. I realize that it is still to early to have viable conclusions but is sure doesn't look good. Last years spring hail storm was definitely a factor on our bird population it even beat all of the leaves off of the Mesquite trees. This year even our horned lizard population is down because they are driving the red ants out. Hopefully these late summer rains will help the late nesting Quail birds with their new clutches.

Having been in the pest control business for 23 years, I can tell you the fireants have gotten very bad. I think the ants are having an impact on the indigenous species, but perhaps not to the point of severe population declination.


A couple hundred dollars of ant bait taken with you on scouting trips, feeder reloads and such would do wonders. Broadcast it with a hand-spreader, otherwise it will take you forever to apply it all.
The best over-the-counter ant bait is "Ascend" fireant bait. Can be had at most decent feed stores. You won't find it at Walmart.

I'm afraid I finally must agree with Bob and Dragon on this deal. All the studies show it's a combination, and without a doubt the rain factor is big, but we have hunted the plains for years and for the last three or so - it's been downhill. The land owner we hunt with most told me two weeks ago that he hasn't seen a single covey on his place all year. But, he said, he's seen plenty of fireants. When we started hunting there years ago we NEVER saw an ant mound. Sure, there were good years and some not so good, but overall it's been on a steady decline since the ants showed up. Seems like everything in our eco-system that is imported is B A D........ $.o2

I think the climate and rainfall are bigger factors. 30 yrs ago in the springtown poolville area there were plenty of birds. And just about every field was turned over every yr.Even though theres more hms on smaller places now theres seems two be lots of land that just doesnt get farmed.I just dont think much on the fragmantion. JM 2cents

I grew up in East Texas. We had quite a few quail around. Can't find one out there now. About the time the fire ants started showing up the quail started to go. Inconsistent rain hasn't helped out west lately but that has never been a problem in East Texas. No real changes in farming in East Texas either. My vote is the ants.

I was reading a article about quail popluations in a tx hunting magazine and ants we're like number 8 on a list of hurting quail population. First was loss of habitat/varmints/rain/ I don't remember the rest. The aritce was done by some biologist from QU!! I was reading the article in a Dentist office, Thats why I don't remember the details!!!

I think you are uneducated. Call Dale Rollins. He will shed some light on the situation for you.

Why don't you just spell it out yourself?

Please tell us.

He wants him to talk to someone with some authority on the subject. That would be Dale..........

He should share everything he has learned from Dale so to save us and Dale a phone call since he himself is an expert or seems to be...

He probably could and maybe should, but this topic gets discused every month or so and the ant folks believe it's ants and the habitat and rain folks still believe their right. Never seems to get settled to anyones satisfaction. Maybe someone could post a link to one of Dales' articles but I'm guessing that wouldn't get it settled either...Hell, I'm convinced it's got something to do with Dick Cheney and a semi auto.

Well this sure seems to be the hot topic in the bird hunting world. So here comes my 2 cents. I grew up in east texas. The first hunting that I ever was around was following my dad chasing after quail in ne texas. Finding quail was not a problem. It was sparsly populated and the people that did live on the land, lived off the land (large truck patches w/ grown up fench rows, soybean, cornfields,etc.) Also, many of them trapped (coons, fox, bobcat) as an additional source of income. This was in the early 60's. Thru the 60's and early 70's when I became a bird hunting fanatic myself, a couple of things began to change. First, cattle became popular. Everbody wanted a small farm with some cows on it. With the cows came nice clean fence rows, bushhogs, and some nice grasses for the cows to eat. Also, I can remember several people talking about busting up quail nest while cutting hay for the cattle. The second thing that brought a change to our area was the whitetail deer. Now, before anybody gets upset let me state that I am a deer hunter also. In fact I hunt it all with a passion, but quail hunting has a special place in my heart. But, I regress. People went crazy after these deer. Places that nobody cared about before became deer leases. People cleaned out the sage and goat weeds and planted things that deer like. It was about this time (1975-1980) that we started having to hunt harder to find the same amount of birds. Now this was before fire ants became a problem here!
In the late 70's in order to find quail and avoid deer hunters, we often times would take a boat launch it in red river, load a couple of dogs and head off for the sandbar areas of the river (at that time you could hunt up to the high water mark on a river). The sand bars had goat weed, plum thickets and dove weed and more importantly lots of quail! Now I said all of that to say this. Right here we had an area where the habitat was changed in all of the county except for small strips of cover along red river. For about 10 years, when all of the bird hunters said no more birds in this county, we enjoyed good to great (25-35 in an afternoon) hunts on these red river sand bars because the habitat never changed and the quail remained!
Fire ants are here now, in fact in staggering numbers. I believe that they are absoultley a menace to quail. I believe they played a role in wiping out what was left of our wild quail pop. here in this county. And sadly, most all of our river hunts went away as people began to hunt deer right to the rivers edge. We did like most of the east texans went out west. This will be our 19th year on our lease. But let me tell you every spring when I'm down there fishing on the red and I get around some pockets of quail habitat, there are still a few wild bobs down there looking to mate.
That is a long winded way of saying 1)HABITAT
2)predators,fire ants,climate cange and every thing else
I will close with one last thing(got more to say but i find this exhausting), If it was only fire ants the areas of coastal se tex below houston would have 0 quail but when the conditions are right the quail are there!

Well said westtex75. I bumped a good sized covey in El Campo during the dove opener as I was retrieving a bird from the fence row cover. It put a big smile on my face to see those birds in a place where I thought they were long gone.

I can go along with that. Habitat due to changing ag practices like adding cattle. When hunting ducks in Fannin my buddy will say used to hunt quail, there, there, there, and guess what, cattle are on all of those places and fence rows are clean. Not due to fragmentation but changing ag practices and no cover. But land fragmentation and fire ants are the bottom of my list imo...

Tottaly agree with you. In 1989 we had no turkeys but still had huntable numbers of guail. In 1990 we got turkey and fire ants introduced to our area. Now turkeys chicks are on the ground and are numbers are strong, but ole Bob is just as rare as a republican in San francisco.

Kinda like Obama

fire ants don't like turkey nests and poults?