We have wood piles and tree lines on fence lines BigJ. I see Quail everyday on my farm. Numbering from sometimes just 5 or 6 to seeign coveys in the dozens this winter. We have a 200 acre piece of ground that has only 120 acres farmed. The rest is scrub grassland (Actually sand prairie) that we don't do a thing too and it is surronded my oaktrees and black walnuts. The Quail are THICK in there for much of the year. Our farm is 2000 acres but we only ranch about 600 acres of it, the rest is rented out to a crop farmer. The 600 acres is broken down like this (40 acres of grassland with trees mixed around it with about 8 piles of downed trees that we pushed together to give wildlife good shelter, 60 acre Alfalfa field, drive around it in the mid summer and on 1 out of ever 6 or so fence posts there will be a quail. 165 acres of real nasty pasture that is barely grazed because much of happens to be the outlets for drain tiles. It's wet, but never underwater. Lots of rank grass and good cover for game animals. Lots of shrubs. 80 acres of dry pasture with 1 mile of tree line around it. Lots of quail hover around back there. 75 more acres this year are in OATS and BARLEY. Some of the best feed possible for game birds. The other 75 is being planted in another pasture with those same crops as nurse fields. Oh, There will be Pearl Millet planted behid the one 75 acres to be used as grazing. That crop will get mature and seed shater will be everywhere. Great for birds. The last 75 is an Alfalfa and Clover mixed with grass pasture. This one grows real tall and provides good shelter along the fence lines for nesting areas. The rest is homesites and Alleyways and a pens. One 7 acre pen that has animals on it only during 1 or 2 days in the spring (AI) and than is left to grow wild. By fall if i don't mow it (Usually don't) the weeds can be as hight as 7 feet tall. And yes, if you mow it you see Quail and Rabbits everywhere. Our average field size is probably 60 acres on this part of the farm and we have more than 12 miles of fenceline. It helps. ALOT.

We moved here in 2000 and our Quail and Pheasent populations were huge but had a very hard winter that year. The next year we had almost none until we started managing for the wildlife. Not to hunt the birds or rabbits but to allow some balance to come back. To be honest, I can give a flying fart about the Pheasant population, it is the Quail that I care about, sorry, they are the native animal not the ringneck. If Prairie Chickens were around here than i would do whatever i could for them. Yes, I keep hearing that Quail are down but refuse to blame the Yotes or Cats for it. 1) As I keep saying there is not a Feral Cat problem around here at all. 2) As soon as we increased habitat we saw an explosion in chicks every year and the fall numbers of Quail are truely good and would be even better if the neighbors didn't blow them to hell every fall.

the people who complain the most about lack of quail around here are the same people who spray round up on every weed, plow up every fence line and than burn the posts instead of leaving the old wood as a shelter and plow from road to road and mow or spray the roadside 6 times a year. It is stupid. They than go and plow up the fields in the fall which removes the stubble as any sort of shelter and the left behind corn gets buried. Either practice and promote policies that enhance habitat or stop complaining about the rabbit and Quail numbers being down. My favorite to this day was a guy saying he left some trees standing for cover on his fence line but the only birds that used them were the hawks to kill rabbits and stuff. I said really. He than pointed to the trees he had left. One tree, ever 400 yards or so...Oh, god.