14 
TH-E .A UsD U BO N BUC iE eee 
When it comes to the grocery department, the bobwhite 
is much like a chicken because it eats just about everything 
available. For the first few days of their lives, the young eat 
insects, a diet rich in protein and a good one to grow on. In 
late spring, summer and fall both young and adults eat large 
amounts of insects. That bobwhites eat what is most readily 
available is made clear by a study of quail crops. During the 
hunting seasons of 1950 and 1951, Southern Illinois University 
obtained crops from hunters in the southern one third of the 
state. Korean and Japanese lespedeza occurred in about 42% 
of the crops; corn was found in about 29% and soybeans in 
22%. Common ragweed occurred in about a quarter of the 
crops, examined. Other foods that showed up frequently were 
Bidens or Spanish needle, crabgrass seed, small wild bean, 
beggar’s-tick, acorns, and yellow foxtail. Soybeans were first 
in rank when a deep snow lay on the ground, and investigators 
surmised that soybean stubble was not crushed under heavy 
snow. Therefore bobwhites could get under it to feed. 
Why hunt quail? The most valid reason as far as I am 
concerned is to utilize a crop of the land. That is the most 
valid reason I can think of, but the reason that I hunt them 
is because I enjoy it. As is true with all wild things, far more 
quail are produced during a breeding season than can possibly 
survive until the following season. This is a surplus Mother 
Nature whittle at from the time the chicks pip their egg shells. 
In quail, this surplus amounts to about 70 per cent of the 
entire crop; seven out of 10 bobwhites hatched this spring wont 
live to breed next spring. The hunter takes part of this surplus 
(he is. never efficient enough to take it all). We could harvest 
twice as many quail as we do without influencing population 
trends. 
Brush burning and more recent innovations—brush spray- 
ing, fall plowing, and bulldozing—are the major reasons why 
we don’t have more quail in Illinois. This is a hard problem 
to solve because most of the land in Illinois is privately owned 
and most rural landowners have a strong aversion to brush. 
A brushy acre is a wasted acre. High land taxes, high land 
prices, and high interest rates on loans make it even harder to 
convince most farmers that a briar patch here and there really 
doesn’t decrease his income to any great extent. 
In Illinois, about one hunting license buyer out of three 
claims he is a quail hunter. The average quail hunter goes out 
about five times during the season and bags from two to three 
birds each time. Hunting license fees and an 11% tax on sport- 
ing arms and ammunition—assessed by the Federal government 
and allocated to the states according to the number of licenses 
sold and the area of the state—finance projects beneficial to 
quail. One, the Shawnee Forest Project, has been mentioned. 
Another is a cover restoration project on farms. This helps 
