42 Game Survey of the North Central States 



owner himself points out an influx of quail during the winter. Its large size, 

 however, forced me to include it as a population sample.) 



The only way to reconcile all of the foregoing considerations is to assume 

 that there is a saturation point in the neighborhood of a quail per acre, beyond 

 which density will not increase except for temporary periods or under confine- 

 ment. This saturation point appears to limit the number of wild quail on any 

 area. It is occasionally attained now, but was undoubtedly more frequently at- 

 tained in past years. There were more quail in the past than at present, not be- 

 cause the saturation point has changed, but because saturated areas were more 

 frequent and there was a greater total acreage inhabited by quail. 



In other words, the "blanks" now caused by devegetated farms did not yet 

 exist. The "blanks" caused by uninhabited woods of course existed then just as 

 they do now. 



The conception of a saturation point originated with Stoddard during the 

 Georgia quail investigation. 



The reasons for the saturation point are as yet unknown, and present one of 

 the most interesting unanswered problems in the whole field of game research. 

 It seems entirely unlikely that any ordinary factor, such as food, cover, or predators 

 should operate in such a uniform manner over many States. All of the States in 

 this region show the same saturation point (in the neighborhood of a bird per 

 acre) ; also Georgia (Stoddard) and Mississippi (Leopold, game survey) . 



Some of the other possible reasons for the saturation point are: 



(1) Combativeness between covies, or between pairs during the nesting 

 season. 



(2) Disease or parasites depending for their spread on the degree of 

 crowding. 



No evidence of intolerance of concentration during the nesting season was 

 obtained. One case is presented later showing a nest per 2 acres which corre- 

 sponds exactly with the saturation point. Stoddard, however, found 6 quail nests 

 on one acre in Florida, indicating that combativeness during the nesting season 

 can hardly be the "cause" of the saturation point. The next caption seems to 

 exclude combativeness as between covies. 



Disease is possibly the most likely hypothesis for explaining the saturation 

 point. Knowledge of quail disease is still too deficient to make possible a guess 

 as to the particular disease which might be its cause, or as to the manner in which 

 it operates. A strong tendency toward disease when quail are confined in pens 

 has long been known, and some of the causative organisms have been identified. 

 Some of these diseases seem to prevail to a degree roughly proportional to the 

 degree ofjrrowding. 



Temporary Concentrations. While tracts of 160 acres or over do not 

 often exceed the saturation point of a quail per acre, much greater populations 

 exist for temporary periods on smaller areas. Some samples of the nature and 

 extent of such temporary concentrations are given in Table 8. 



