Lionel,  there are several prongs to that answer.  I did a lot of work in
the Midwest on dropping Pheasants.  When I was a kid in the mid 70'S  we
used to shoot a limit of 3 pheasants every day we hunted.  By the time I was
25  finding a limit was extremely rare.  And you hunt HARD for it.  before
that we would just walk along the road ditches.

First off,  Neonics are not that old by any stretch,  and lightly used in
your area if at all.  

But the main decline in the Midwest in both Pheasant and quail is from 2
reasons.  Habitat,  and grain harvesting.  Untilled and just as large an
issue, unmowed areas have dropped in the Midest by huge numbers.

Around 1980 most ag areas here also switched from old corn pickers to the
newer combines.  At the same time Combines (2388 Case) became much more
efficient and actually set standards for harvest.  Row pickers general left
around 5%  and as much as 10% of the grain in the fields.  The 2388 came out
and a standard was set at 1.5% for case,  JD and others quickly followed.
Currently the standard is less than 1% loss.  So a HUGE amount of winter
forage is gone.  That was the biggest blow to pheasants (not quail)

Quail are hit HARD by predators.  Fur prices are gone, so raccoons and
possums are no longer controlled.  Turkeys are huge quail egg predators,
add in feral housecats and a lot more coyotes than ever and successful
nesting for quail is rare. Around here if you want quail you hunt close to
the farmhouse,  farther out in the brush there are none.
Also EXTERMLY hard on both are the increase numbers for small hawks.  Most
small hawks will take a whole covey of chicks one at a time.  They used to
be shot on sight....  now there protected.  Its always a give and take
balance.

I am also sure that the complete and total spraying of pesticides like
Atrizine and others also played a part, but probably a small part that very
hard to define.  It is sure that Ag chemicals are growing not shrinking,
but the chems used 60 years back were environmentally worse.   Hard to
correlate for sure.  Which is worse? Smaller doses of really nasty stuff or
larger doses of less toxic? 


Charles

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