Upland Bird Habitat with Quail P

This farm is in the center of our long time quail productive region in Missouri. From the road it appears to be the typical grain or row crop farm complete with soft edge and lightly wooded creeks dissecting the fields along with grassed in and lightly brushed fence lines. From the road this farm is indistinguishable from any of the others under hunting lease contract on this one map sheet of a couple of thousand acres and lacking any special appeal.

This farm's road appearance and the fact it is a large contiguous acreage piece that will require a lot more than 3 hours to walk through it all even with the best quail dog brace is frequently enough to encourage or discourage the hunter dependent upon his current energy level, weather conditions and bag contents. For the hunter that does hunt this ground this is what he will find on the back side.

A lot more quail holding soft edge habitat. As soft of edge habitat that can be created or found. This is as good as it gets.

One side of the tree line is the grain crop field shown in the top picture the other side is this buffer strip that came in thin separated from the crop field by the scrub line that runs for more than a couple of miles along the drainages through the farm. While an occasional pheasant will loaf in the grass, this particular farm is on the fringe of the pheasant range and the grass will yield far more singles action from a covey flush when the hunters is fortunate to get them to flush into the grass. This allows for the ideal conditions of having observation to witness good dog work, blue sky shooting and single quail in open grass seem to hold just fine.
This is Kevin C., a long time member and his current dog PJ. Kevin is exclusively a quail hunter training and hunting his own dogs and has one dog at a time for both hunting and a family pet. Kevin is also one of those hunters that has a great dog training ability as has been shown repeatedly over the seasons with many pictures such as this from a succession of dogs. What Kevin and others with great quail dogs have shown us it is far more the quality of the dog than the hunter that makes for the better quail hunting days even on the down years.

Local hunters will quickly agree there are many such farms of such quality and less that hold the coveys just fine making for a good day in the field. Non-resident hunters frequently ask how to find such habitat in the right region of the state and that is where the game species listed on the individual map sheets assist along with the Association staff taking the time to get the first year Association hunter jump started with recommendations on where to hunt for his bird and habitat of choice.

The new Association hunter can trust the Association staff's recommendation as their motivation is pure. That motivation is to get that hunter such a good experience his first season hunting with the Association that he will want to renew his membership. After the first year members typically develop favorite areas they return to each season while later in the hunting trip most enjoy the added bit of adventure at discovering new land. It does not take long at all until the hunter realizes he is not in search of one place to hunt he is subtracting by tens of thousands of acres where he is not going to hunt simply due to not having enough time.

Upland Bird Habitat in a Quail Predominate Region