Beef, Brush, and Bobwhites: Quail Management in Cattle Country

Preface

Preface to the texas a&M university Press edition I WROTE the first edition of Beef, Brush, and Bobwhites (BBB) at Texas Tech University before I moved to South Texas in January 1984. A university press had accepted the book for publication. However, the press dillydallied. I needed to establish a presence in South Texas, which was Val Lehmann (1913–1987) country (longtime wildlife biologist for the King Ranch and author of Bobwhites in the Rio Grande Plain of Texas). So I asked the late Sam Beasom (1945–1995), then director of the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute (CKWRI), if the institute would like to publish the book. He agreed, and we printed 2,000 soft covers and 1,000 hard covers under the banner of CKWRI Press, which did not exist. It was Ed Kozicky’s idea to publish the book under that banner (he had published Hunting Preserves for Sport or Profit under the same banner). My goal was to write a very user-friendly, strongly management-oriented book. As I stated on the dust cover, BBB “is meant to be kept on the dashboard of your pickup.” About2008FidelHernándezapproachedmewiththeideaofcollaboratingon a revised edition of BBB. This was an excellent idea to me because fresh knowledge contained in a few score research papers that appeared after 1986 needed to be incorporated into the book. Most of these papers came from CKWRI— the epicenter of bobwhite research in North America. Authors of these papers included myself, Fidel, Lenny Brennan (editor of Texas Quails), Steve DeMaso, Bill Kuvlesky, and several graduate students. Revising the book also provided the opportunity to correct known errors in the first edition, add new information on bobwhites per se, and discuss bobwhite management in the face of challenges that have arisen. Three chapters did not appear as stand-alone discussions in the original BBB. Chapter 1 provides information on the origin of bobwhites, their recent population status in America, and status of knowledge on the species. We discuss important new principles of habitat management such as usable space and slack in chapter 3. Chapter 10 discusses how to use sex and age ratios, determined from birds in the harvest, to understand and manage populations. The remaining chapters all benefited from knowledge that has been gained since 1986. We know more about habitat features that encourage or discourage bobwhites, and that knowledge helps us better manage grazing and brush. We xiv beef, brush, and bobwhites have more research data on food supplementation, provision of water, and predator control, so we better understand the value of these practices in bobwhite management. In some cases, topics imponderable twenty-five years ago have come to the fore. For example, we did not use to worry about aflatoxin contamination of feed, but that has become a management issue. Accordingly, chapter 6 discusses how to deal with this poison. Chapter 9 describes how to use helicopters to count bobwhites. Chapter 12 provides examples of comprehensive, on-the-ground bobwhite management in North and South Texas. We think readers will find this chapter informative and entertaining. As we continue to study bobwhites in the next twenty-five years, they will not change, or if they do, the change will be imperceptible to humans. What will change most dramatically as time passes will be the concepts in our minds, which we must edit as needed to fit the repository of knowledge at hand. The descriptive knowledge we have gained in the past quarter century helps us better understand how these birds respond to the compliments and insults that nature and humans offer up. Fidel and I hope we have retained the best traditional knowledge and captured the most important new knowledge in this revision of Beef, Brush, and Bobwhites. —Fred S. Guthery Stillwater, Oklahoma xiv preface ...