Bobwhite 25 



created additional cover and food in some States, but this advantage was about 

 offset by the sudden spread of good roads and motor travel, a further increase in 

 population and leisure time, and further improvements in arms and ammunition. 

 Out of all this comes the posted farm, the impending threat of the songbird list, 

 and the eleventh hour rush to legislate the conservation of a shrinking resource, 

 or to bolster it up with foreign substitutes. Finally has come the extremely recent 

 realization that quail are a crop, the production of which can be aided by legisla- 

 tive enactments, but accomplished by one and only one method, namely the modi- 

 fication of the land to make the environment favorable. 



To realize that quail are a crop does not of itself, however, answer the prac- 

 tical question of how to produce it. Where? Why? How many? By whom? 

 With what help? For whom? Under what terms? 



These are the questions to be untangled, in so far as may be possible, in this 

 chapter. 



Changes in Distribution and Abundance. We are accustomed to 

 thinking of all game as unbelievably abundant before the advent of the white man, 

 and suffering a uniform decline with the spread of settlements. The reader may 

 not, therefore, accept without proof the assertion that there was a great increase 

 in quail during the era of early settlement. Accordingly let us examine some of 

 the historical evidence. 



In 1882, Wheaton, Ohio's foremost ornithologist, recorded the opinion that 

 the quail was "probably absent or at least confined to but few localities in the 

 State at the time of its first settlement, and has steadily increased in numbers as 

 the -forest has been cleared away." The italics are mine. 



Wheaton quotes Dr. Howard E. Jones as saying that his great-grandfather 

 settled near Chillicothe in Ross County in 1798, and resided there several years 

 bejore he heard the first quail. He records this event with delight, and clearly 

 regarded the bird as an arrival from other parts. 



Chillicothe is in the heart of what has since been the best quail country of 

 Ohio. 



Hatch, the first State zoologist of Minnesota, writes in 1892 that bobwhite is 



. . . following up the progress of agriculture steadily but is nowhere 

 yet abundant. . . . Reverend Mr. Gear ... an army chaplain (at Fort 

 Snelling) (says) that there were no quails here until imported ... by 

 sportsmen amongst the army officials on different occasions. Want of food 

 . . . prevented their material increase . . . until the advent of general 

 farming. Now seen at Red Lake Falls and the latitude of Ottertail." 



Woodruff, in his "Birds of the Chicago Area" (1907), says of bobwhite: 



"Of late years the range has been gradually extended westward along the 

 lines of the railroads." 



He probably means westward across the plains States, and implies that the 

 quail followed the grain farms which followed the railroads. 



