Target Idle Land To Help North Missouri’s Quail Population

Scott Engelman,
Farm Bill Wildlife Biologist
Quail Forever
There’s no sense in ignoring it. Quail, rabbits, prairie chickens, and upland songbirds have taken a huge hit since the mid-1980s. There are dozens of reasons why most people don’t hear quail each spring, and they are all partially valid, but improving your own property is the most important step you can take to turn the corner on bringing small game back to North Missouri. Habitat development remains the cheapest, most cost effective, and least time consuming method for increasing wildlife on your property.
Facts don’t lie, 94% of the state is privately owned as of 2010 according to census data. If you want to see more quail and rabbits on your own property, then I want you to ask yourself what your property has to offer them. If you’re interested in giving your grandchildren a place to hunt as they grow up, then idle land can be the best place to start growing birds on your property. Letting land remain idle will not significantly help wildlife; doing nothing is the same as doing something, but not caring what the results are.
Land becomes idle when it is too costly to crop, potentially dangerous for cattle, or too steep or hard to access to put equipment on the ground. It is also the best place to start making habitat for upland birds, deer, turkey, rabbits, native pollinators, and quail. You don’t have to retire cropland through a program like CRP, or cut into the bottom line of your operation to give game species an edge on your property. You know the place I’m talking about; an older, small field that is too small to get your new tractor in, or a woody hedgerow behind a creek you haven’t done anything to since you pulled posts from it. Perhaps you’re trying to pull a crop from land that just won’t produce it dependable yields.
Your actions today could mean that your grandchildren will have a chance to hunt wild quail and rabbits on your property. Is that worth a couple weekends cutting brush and disking fields?
Consider your back-lots, your woody edges, your poorly performing crop field borders, and ask yourself this question. “Am I making money here, and is it going to impact my bottom line to do something for wildlife?” You will help quail and rabbits with as small an action as cutting down 5 or 6 trees to let the buckbrush and brambles grow thicker. Or, consider driving along your field edges in April or early November with a tank of glyphosate to set back the grass and give quail chicks space to walk and search for insects. If you have low yields along a north-south crop edge, consider planting native grass next to your field, where shadows cast by trees mean you waste your money planting, spraying, and harvesting a crop that under-performs year after year. NRCS, FSA, MDC, and conservation groups statewide have many programs could help out with much of the costs. In a year or two, you might reap the rewards with the ability to hunt for quail and rabbits on your property again.
I am available, and the Missouri Department of Conservation’s Private Land Conservationists as well, to any landowner in Sullivan, Mercer, Putnam and Grundy Counties to help make a wildlife plan, free of charge. Whatever you do, I encourage you to look at your overgrown fields, old fencerows, and constantly soggy or shady field margins and recognize that the future of wildlife on your property can start there. Remember too, that on your land, nobody else can do it for you.