26 Game Survey of the North Central States 



Nelson, in "Birds of Northeast Illinois" (1877), says of quail: 



. . . still a common resident (in northeast Illinois) . . . exceed- 

 ingly numerous in southern Illinois." 



The most convincing witness, however, is found not among the ornithologists, 

 but rather among the first generation of thinking sportsmen. Bogardus, in his 

 "Field Cover and Trap Shooting" (1874), writes of quail: 



"They are much more numerous now in Illinois and the other prairie States 

 than they were formerly. I think the cultivation of the land and the groivth of 

 osageorangehedgeshaivebroughtaboutthemcrea.se. . . . Last fall (1873?) 

 there was not one quail (in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee) to a hun- 

 dred ... in Illinois." 



The evidence published by authorities is corroborated by the verbal evidence 

 of old-timers. Edward Rune, a market hunter whose parents pioneered in north- 

 east Missouri with the Boone family, and who lived in Des Moines County, 

 Iowa, until his death about 1905, frequently told me that quail were not 

 especially plentiful in either Missouri or Iowa before the advent of grain and 

 clearings. His experience was confined to the riverbreak type, which is now the 

 cream of the quail country. 



Nelson's phrasing possibly implies a decline in northern Illinois by 1877. 

 Wheaton saw no decline in Ohio by 1882. Kumlien (1903) says that the quail 

 of Wisconsin: 



. gradually decreased in numbers until about 1885, (when) they 

 were entirely absent from many localities where they were once common. The 

 clearing away of underbrush, and the introduction of wire fences in place of the 

 old-fashioned rails, with their weed covered space on each side, probably had as 

 much to do with their disappearance as too close or lawless shooting." 



The early decline in Wisconsin is corroborated by the early closure to all 

 hunting (about 1894). 



Hatch implies a still rising trend in Minnesota in 1892. Huff thinks the 

 decline in Southern Illinois began about 1905. 



The decline had in places reached an advanced stage when Ohio was closed 

 in 1912 and Iowa in 1917. 



In general, then, the third stage, that of decline with clean farming, seems 

 to have begun as early as 1875 in some regions, and as late as 1905 in others. 

 In the remote Ozarks there is little farming, clean or otherwise. There the third 

 stage is indistinguishable from the fourth. 



History of Quail on a Typical Farm. The rise and fall of bobwhite 

 in the region as a whole is more convincing when followed in detail on a specific 

 farm. It is hard to find one with a known physical history paralleled by a known 

 history of game. In Callaway County, Missouri, I had the good fortune to find a 

 farm on which at least one stage (that of agricultural intensification), can be defi- 

 nitely traced and measured. 



