BOB-WHITE IX SOUTHEAST IOWA 
43 
Til 111 VMO BOB-WHITE SEASON IN SOUTHEAST 
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By ROBERT MOORMAN and GEORGE 0. HENDRICKSON i 
Thu open season on the Bob- white (Colin ns l\ rirr/ininnnn), November 
15- December 15, 1940, was less satisfactory in general than the very 
successful season, 1939. As many hunters and bird students have asked 
for a report on the 1940 period, this article has been prepared to open 
with a discussion of the autumn weather based on data supplied by 
Reed {1940) who summarized November as cold and wet with more 
than the usual amount of snow, and December as relatively warm and 
wet. 
The mean temperature for November in the Bob- white region was 
about 2° F. below normal and the precipitation about .3 inch above 
normal, falling generally in the region on 11 days and at least in traces 
in scattered localities on 12 additional days. The lowest temperature 
of the month, —4 degrees F., was recorded November 15 at the close 
of a 4-day cold spell. The first 10 days of November and the last 16 
were much milder. December opened with a 3-day zero period, the 
only cold spell of the month. 
November 11 brought a blizzard with a 30-mile northwest wind and 
2 inches of snow, varying from a trace to 3.S inches in the 22 counties 
of the Bob-white region. Observations at the Decatur- Wayne County 
Experimental Bob- white Management Area show that the storm 
prompted considerable movement of the coveys of Bob-whites. Driven 
by the wind and snow the quail, in light protective cover and tilled 
hillsides, moved to denser herbaceous stands and larger wooded tracts 
chiefly of the lower land. On the first day of hunting, the majority 
of the birds were headquartering and holding fast in dense cover 
sheltered from the wind. They fed in nearby weed patches, and fields 
of corn and sorghum. 
Previous to the hunting season, on the basis of sample counts on 
-mailer tracts of the area, 1,549 Bob-whites were estimated on the 
area of 7,713 acres. In the summer and fall 41 different broods were 
accurately counted and shown to contain an approximate average oi 
10 young. To a spring seedstock of 389 Bob-whites, of which 60 per- 
cent presumably reared an average of 10 young to a pair of adults, 
about 1,160 \oung were added during the summer. That represents 
an increase of 298 percent during the season, which is less than a 456 
percent increase the year before (Sanders. 1940) when a fall popula- 
tion of 2,266 Bob-whites was attained. Older farmers who spoke of 
the 1939 number as the highest they had seen for many years, were 
of the general opinion that the 1940 population was less than that of 
1939. Quail estimates by farmers in 1939 tended to be higher than 
those of the writers, while in 1940 the converse was true. Perhaps 
the heavy population of 1939 encouraged too optimistic reports from 
farmers, and the noticeably fewer birds depressed their reports the 
following year. 
During the 31 days of the 1940 season 20 hunting parties on the 
7,713-acre Decatur-Wayne County area harvested 60 quail, slightly less 
than 4 percent of the fall numbers. Two quail were in the average 
bag of a hunter in 14 successful parties averaging 2.2 hunters a party. 
Six parties failed to get any quail. 
By the time the open quail season was half over some alarm had 
arisen about the condition of the quail population in southern Iowa. 
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Thi' Tmva AtrnruJMiHil Experiment Station, Amw, Iowa. 
iiud Wildlife Servif-e ( I Jojoirtm^iu of rhe Interior}' 
riiiswrviuinii Commission, :iml American Wildlife Institute 
