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Often coveys will meet by chance in fall and travel together 
for a while, and this has led to the tale that a pair will nest 
more than once a year, especially if the chicks are of different 
ages. A pair of bobwhites cannot have more than one success- 
ful brood a year because there isn’t enough time. From 4 to 5 
months is required to raise a brood from the time the first 
egg is laid until the young are grown. 
In many wild things there is a limit to crowding. Under 
the best of conditions, and you may find these conditions on 
Southern quail plantations, the highest bird population attain- 
able was about one quail per acre, on the average. It is doubtful 
if this level could be reached in Illinois, except perhaps under 
the most ideal conditions. 
Anyone who has talked with farmers, sportsmen, or 
other people who are interested in bobwhites hears, other stories 
too. One concerns coveys of 40 or more birds—a story you hear 
frequently. I have hunted quail for 20 years, and the biggest 
covey I ever saw contained between 20 and 25 birds, and it 
appeared huge. Sometimes, if you should happen on two coveys 
that had joined forces temporarily, you might flush 40 birds, 
but I have yet to see a 40 bird covey that is actually one covey. 
You hear that quail coveys must be broken to prevent 
inbreeding. | can’t understand how any person who knows 
anything at all about bobwhites would believe such nonsence. 
There is an exchange of birds between coveys throughout the 
year, almost from the time that a brood leaves the nest. Be- 
sides, when a covey explodes from a briar patch and scatters, 
it doesn't remain scattered, for within a few minutes a bird will 
give the covey call and individuals begin to regroup. An old 
hunting friend of mine told me that if I would return to 
where I flushed a covey within an hour after I flushed them, 
generally I would find one or two birds that had moved back. 
I have tried this and it has worked more times than it has 
failed. I don’t claim to be a geneticist by any means, but from 
what little I’ve read on the subject, I understand that most 
mutations are harmful and therefore would be weeded out in 
the wild in a species such as the bobwhite. If bobwhites, could 
be destroyed by inbreeding, they would have been inbred out 
long before Columbus arrived. 
Frequently, you hear about the big timber bobwhites we 
used to have and how they mixed with imported Mexican 
quail and disappeared. I can still show you big “‘timber’’ bob- 
whites in areas where cover is thick. The first nesting attempt 
is successful and the birds have all summer to grow. As far 
as the Mexican quail story is concerned, Illinois did import 
such birds—some 16,000 of them between 1925 and 1929— 
but I don’t think that this had much effect on our well-estab- 
lished native population. 
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