32 Game Survey of the North Central States 



This being the case, the funds spent in planting them are not only sheer waste, but 

 also represent a diversion of energy from the real need: management of the native 

 bobwhite. 



Summary. Quail abundance has changed with changing environment. 



They were originally scarce or absent both in woods unbroken by prairie, and 

 prairie unbroken by woods. 



They spread northward and southward into the woods with the advent of 

 grain and clearings, and westward into the prairies with the advent of grain and 

 hedges. The peak of abundance on the best farmlands was about 1880; on 

 the marginal or retarded lands as late as 1905. The present decline is associated 

 with clean farming. 



This response to changes in the environment is not only a matter of his- 

 torical record, but was seen and measured on a Missouri farm in process of 

 "improvement." 



In addition to changes in environment, the quail stock itself may have suf- 

 fered deterioration in some States through the planting of Mexican quail. 



Western quails show only colony-survival, and are not needed. 



STATUS 



Geographic Distribution. To define the distribution of quail, we must 

 deal with two questions: first, the geographic limits of the territory in which 

 there are any quail at all, and second, the localities within that territory exhibiting 

 various degrees of abundance. 



For the geographic limits of the species, the reader will have to turn forward 

 to Map 8. 



The local variations in abundance are shown on Map 6. 



Map 8 will show the reader what he probably already knows, namely that 

 quail occur in all parts of the north central region except the north woods type. 

 The north boundary of the species, for reasons to be pointed out in a subsequent 

 caption on "irruptions," is not stable, and hence is shown on Map 8 in straight 

 lines which in most instances simply connect the present most northerly outpost 

 on the east and west sides of each state. Where the present north line is ex- 

 tremely irregular, the shape is roughly blocked out. 



Nearly Quail-less Area. Between the extreme limit of distribution, and 

 the more southerly belt of regular or irregular abundance, there lies a strip of 

 territory two or three counties wide, in which quail exist as scattered colonies (see 

 crosses on Map 6) and in which no records of past abundance have come to light. 

 The exact extent of this "nearly quail-less area" was mapped only in Wisconsin. 

 The peculiar thing is that it does not end where the north boundary of the range 

 joins Lake Michigan, but extends southward down the shore of the lake in a belt 

 one or two counties wide, not only to the south boundary of Wisconsin, but also 

 across the northeast corner of Illinois and into the extreme northwest corner of 



