Negligent would be an understatement

I just realized I hadn't posted anything, not one word, since Sept 2. Ok, I actually realized it a month ago but just got around to doing something about it today. It's not like nothing's been going on or so much has been going on that I haven't had time to talk about it. Lots has been going on and I have had time to talk about it, I just spent that time doing something else.

So here's the last 3 months in review....

Dove Season(s)

The first dove season was the best we've had in years. My freezer is slap full of birds, partly due to more targets and partly due to me shooting better than the recent norm. Over the summer I did a little work on my gun mount (thanks for the tip Chris Batha), mounting in front of a mirror about 100x a day. It's easier than it sounds and it's made a world of difference.

We're not really sure why there were so many more birds, but our best guess is that dry conditions over the summer ruined a lot of corn crops, leaving fewer places for the dove to eat. Whatever the reason, we had numbers every time we went into the field and even when only a few of us showed, we figured out how to put away a limit.

Shrinks the playing field considerably

The second season was a bust. Completely. Many of you heard about the Biblical rains we had in early October, but what didn't make the news was the 3+ inches we got every week after that for the next month. By the time the second season opened the weekend before Thanksgiving the ground was soggy and the feed was rotten. Any bird that came through here slowed down long enough to see that he was gonna get real hungry if he stopped.

It's dried out some and we have a nice millet field that hasn't been cut yet, so there's still hope for the third season.

The Great Bobwhite Revival

I keep promising to post an update on this, and I've been waiting until we had a little more publicly available info in case anyone's curious, but that's been slow in coming so I'm gonna talk about it anyway. This little project now has an official name (The SC Bobwhite Initiative), a logo (I'm not supposed to share that yet), a group of 24 state and federal organizations participating, and 4 focus areas where work is under way.

To say I'm excited about this is putting it mildly.  We've been working on it for 4-5 years and to see it finally take flight is both a relief and a realization that now the hard work begins. The enthusiasm has been overwhelming, and I'm pretty optimistic.

Website should be active before Christmas (fingers crossed) and I'll post a link when it is.

About that pup...

Holy cow I'd forgotten what it was like to have a bird dog pup around the house. Even though my backyard looks like the moon it's been a joy. He spent 6 weeks with the trainer letting the genes bloom and his bloodlines are no joke. 

He'll get steadied next spring and summer and right now we're just gonna look for birds. The drive is astounding and the endurance for an 8 month old is unbelievable. He's fine with the gun and will even hold a point for a little while. Smarter than a 4th grader, too. Should be a fun season.

Shot a deer last week. First time I'd been in the stand all season and 30 mins after I sat down they walked out. Every now and then I get lucky like that. I'm not a trophy deer hunter, just meat for the freezer and that means does are top of the list. This was a nice one, almost 100 lbs. 

I've been much more productive with the camera than the pen and some of that work is on the Instagram account (@spentcartridge). Even had a shot in the Orvis Digital Hunting Book (p43) a few months ago. Having a lot of fun with that. Stay tuned.

A Novel Idea

Got a news release from the NBCI this morning that's an encouraging sign of progress on the bobwhite front. The Wildlife and Hunting Heritage Conservation Council, a federally appointed group advising both the Dept of Interior and Dept of Agriculture, issued a statement saying that adopting the NBCI's approach would “proactively avert problems that have occurred with
other declining game bird species like Lesser Prairie-Chicken and Greater Sage-Grouse.” At last a voice of reason in DC.

The WHHCC is composed of the heads of several state and federal agencies and numerous non-profit conservation organizations. The acknowledgment of the problem (and solution) at this level is vital, and so is the realization that, had action been taken earlier, the current state of the prairie chicken and sage grouse might have been averted.

More from the release:

“…now is the time for federal actions to prevent future ‘listing anxiety’,” wrote John Tomke, council chairman. “Your departments have the opportunity to ensure the restoration of habitat for bobwhite quail, other declining grassland birds and pollinators on private croplands, rangelands and forest lands. In addition, many National Forests, National Parks, National Battlefields, Military Parks and National Wildlife Refuges are ideal places …”

With a bajillion dollar deficit and more fires than the surface of the sun, getting any proactive measures out of the government is difficult, but without a push from citizens and advisory councils it doesn't stand a chance. Find your way to push.

Full news release here.

Bobwhites in the news

Not often that bobwhites make the news twice in one day. The first article is on the PBS website of all places, a lengthy discussion of the movement toward landscape scale management of certain species. Like most of what's written about quail these days it's heavy on the vanilla and PBS monotone and light on the hot sauce, but if you're into conservation it's an interesting read:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/when-climate-change-comes-after-even-the-most-common-species/   

Contrary to what you'd think based on the title, this isn't another "we're all doomed because of global warming" piece laden with liberal undertones of conservative culpability. It leans more toward the effects of recent droughts, something those of you in TX, OK, and as of late CA know too well.

The second is a news release from the NBCI about the funding it's been approved for under Pittman-Robertson (for the politically uninclined, this is the formal name for the excise tax on firearms and ammo).

NBCI approved for funding under federal aid in wildlife restoration program

This is a big deal for several reasons.  First, it provides needed funding for the continued work of the NBCI and provides some predictability to that funding. Living from grant request to grant request is no fun and consumes quite a lot of time and effort, both of which could be better put to use supporting the state-level efforts to restore bobwhite populations.

Second, it affirms that more and more attention is being paid to the plight of the bobwhite and the urgent need to do something about it. This is in many ways at least as important as the funding as it moves us closer and closer to the critical mass it will take to affect change on a range-wide basis. If you have a few minutes, visit their site (bringbackbobwhites.org) and read the 2014 State of the Bobwhite report, particularly the segments on what's happening in each state.  Lots of really good results out there that just don't get a lot of ink.

The Great Bobwhite Revival - Time for an Update

As the year draws to a close I figure it's a good time to revisit this little project I've been on the periphery of for a while.

Sometimes things get going with much fanfare and celebration, and sometimes they just get going. In late May, final touches were hurriedly put on a draft of a plan for restoring bobwhite populations in South Carolina and presented to the SC DNR board. The presentation was well-received and, no objections being raised, we had implicit approval to proceed.

Boom. Kinda like when your ride to the party gets there an hour early. But hey, when your choices are a change in schedule or watching reruns, you get your ass in the car.

In all seriousness, this was an incredible bit of good fortune, albeit unexpected in its timing, and because of the early green light there wasn't a great deal of activity over the summer. Letters of invitation were mailed to a number of governmental agencies and NGOs for inclusion in the council that will serve as the advisory board, set the agenda and oversee the work of the restoration effort. In a move that shows the commitment within the department, the director of the DNR agreed to serve as chair of the council, the importance of which is crucial given the constant and substantial push it will require to generate and maintain momentum.

After the May meeting the plan itself got some polish and shine and a first printing run and it looks great. There's a story about it in the NBCI's 2013 Almanac and you can download a copy from the NBCI's website. Unfortunately it's not yet available on the SC DNR's site.

The project itself is extremely ambitious. The goal is 50% of the managed density target (fancy biologist speak for number of bobwhites per acre) in 5 years and 100% in ten years. This doesn't leave much time for talking and thinking and planning and that's a good thing. These will have to happen as part of the effort, occurring in conjunction with any habitat work.

So where do we go from here? A plan may cost a lot of money and represent a lot of time, but unless you can turn it into results it's only worth the paper it's printed on.  A good first step will be the inaugural meeting of the quail council, at which they will likely choose the initial focus area and set a schedule to begin work. And it grows outward from there, expanding from the focus area to other properties in the focal region, and then to other focal regions within the state.

While public land is the foundation of the effort, private lands are a necessity to reach the density goals, which means that word needs to get out about this effort. Marketing and quail are two words not often found in the same sentence, but the more people we can get talking about it and asking about it and interested enough to raise their hands and say "How can I help?", the quicker this will become reality. Stories like this and this need to spread like weeds.

The Great Bobwhite Revival - Round Two

It's been slightly over a year since I posted an update on this topic. Probably a bit too early to hang a "Mission Accomplished" banner on the aircraft carrier but tangible progress is not hard to find.

On March 23rd of last year I stood before the board of our state's Department of Natural Resources and outlined a process that would get the ball rolling on a statewide bobwhite restoration effort. The pitch, developed with great assistance from a staff biologist, stressed that this would be a collaborative effort between public and private entities, that the DNR would lead the effort, and that the initial stage, the formation of a comprehensive plan, would not cost anything.  We're extremely fortunate to have such a qualified, dedicated quail biologist heading up our state's small game program and truth be told, I was simply the pitchman in the deal.

In my eyes, the most encouraging part of that day was having one board member address the others and say, "The DNR's done a great job bringing deer to the state, bringing turkey back...what are we doing for the quail?"  The board unanimously approved development of the plan. Fast forward twelve months and that plan is circulating among DNR staff in draft form, awaiting final comments and revisions before it is presented to the board.  Barring a request for a complete re-write at that time, the plan could hatch into a full-on fledgling project later this year.

Where do we go from here?

An ongoing challenge will be funding. Eventually the project will require some bucks and the question turns to where that money will come from. Like many states ours not only has a budget shortfall, it has a legislature determined to avoid balancing that budget or, heaven forbid, creating a surplus. Private sector money will be a critical component in the first five years, possibly for longer than that, and building this network of donors and sponsors will be almost as important as planting field borders and prescribed burning.

At some point the project will have to hit a critical mass of supporters to become the landscape-scale success we all hope for. This road map hasn't been drawn yet but I've spent quite a bit of time scribbling ideas. What we'll have to develop is something that people want to be a part of, and ideally something they don't want to be left out of. It will have to radiate a certain cool factor.

Some of you may have seen this video from the TED talks about starting a movement. I've watched it a dozen times and still can't make it all the way through without laughing, possibly a side-effect of having been to a few too many music festivals.



We're still shy of the point where people will be ridiculed for not joining in, but we're definitely past the lone nut stage.

Well whaddaya know

Ever have that dream when you walk into a high school or college exam and it's already half over?  Same feeling I had on Friday when I showed up a half hour early, or so I thought, for the 10am board meeting of the Department of Natural Resources, the one where we were going to present our proposal for a statewide bobwhite quail initiative.  Seemed strange that the doors to the board room would be closed thirty minutes prior to the meeting start time.  I cracked one open and quickly figured out that the meeting - or some meeting - was well under way.

Turns out I never got the memo about moving the start time up an hour.  No big deal, these things happen and during a break I was assured that we'd be worked into the agenda once the meeting resumed.  Around 11am everyone was invited back in and fifteen short minutes later we had our approval.  All's well that ends well.

It was a big day for bobwhites in South Carolina.  After 40+ years of decline, this was the first officially recognized step in reversing the trend, and don't think that official recognition is just some boilerplate political stamp.  Any initiative needs the support of the DNR board to have an honest shot at success.  An unsanctioned side project might work if we were just trying to establish a few hundred acres of habitat as a demonstration area, but to impact bird populations statewide the endorsement of the board is requisite. Things just don't get done on a large scale without this commitment.

More importantly, bobwhites are now on the board's radar along with the "big money" species like deer and bass and the popular ones like turkey, ducks and billfish.  The people at the top are now thinking about bobwhites and what can be done to help them.  And I'm extremely grateful for their support, both Friday and going forward.

I'm amazed at the number of people, both inside and outside gov't agencies, who know about the plight of bobwhites, care about what happens to these birds and generally have an interest in seeing something done.  Yet almost without exception they have no idea what can be done.  It takes a step like Friday's meeting to raise the awareness that something can be done and that there are people working to make it happen.

What we asked for was approval to form a Quail Council, our name for a group composed of gov't agencies, non-profits and individuals who could participate in any way, shape or form in the restoration of bird populations. The DNR doesn't have the resources to do this on its own and public-private partnerships are becoming a very realistic, and often successful, option.  The specified purpose of the Council would be to complete the master plan and commit resources toward implementation.

What we got was a directive from the board to bring them a completed plan and a means (the Council) to accomplish it.  Pretty much the best we could have hoped for.  My guess is we have at least six months of work ahead of us before we can take a finished plan for implementation back to the board.

If you're considering pushing this type of initiative in your own state, and I sincerely hope some of you are, my one suggestion would be that you go out of your way to emphasize that you are not asking for money. We knew this would give our proposal a leg up given that our state is essentially broke and all agencies are being cut to the bone.  There's not enough to keep existing programs functioning much less to fund a new one.  As we progress we're going to do so with an eye toward finding most if not all of the necessary funding from external sources.

The Great Bobwhite Revival - Inching Forward

The season's over and looking at the sheet I send to the state's hunter survey it appears this little project is coming at the right time.  Cliffs Notes version: we need more wild birds.

So here's the latest on the Call to Action....

Support your state's quail initiative

We're scheduled to present out plan to the board of the DNR on 3/23.  Honestly I'm surprised and pleased at how quickly this all came together.  No idea what to expect out of the meeting but we have a pretty good pitch given that what we're proposing won't cost the DNR a dime, and if I were a government agency in a broke state and someone offered a high visibility project for free I'd be hard pressed to turn it down.

Tell your local Congressional delegation to prioritize Farm Bill conservation programs

As of my last post on this topic I'd written to one of my senators and one congressman and hadn't heard from either. Since that time I've received the standard form letter reply from the senator, a letter that didn't even mention the issue by the way, and heard nothing from the congressman.  For what it's worth, though, I ran across this post on the Quail Forever blog yesterday.  In it Dave Nomsen notes

I hope today’s announcement brings a sense of gratification to every Quail Forever member who has contacted a legislative official in support of CRP these last few months.  Our meetings and your conservation testimonials have led us to these new acres.

 So maybe those letters did a little bit of good after all.  And its a nice segue to the third item....

Join a grassland-habitat related conservation organization immediately

I took a pass on this in the last update claiming that I wanted to do some research and put my $$ behind the groups that were willing to play ball with us in SC.  I contacted QF and immediately received a "Count us in" and returned the favor by joining QF/PF.  I also called Bill Bowles, president of QU, and left a message.   And then I emailed.  And then I called and left another message.  Cue the crickets.  Maybe the guy is really busy, but if you're going to post a letter on your website inviting anyone to call or write, you might want to at least get a secretary (please tell me QU has at least one secretary) to return the message.  We'll still take their help if they want to jump in at some point but I don't think I'm going to send my money down there.

Ironically this was one of the same complaints that so many people had about the "old" QU.  I know they've had their troubles lately and I don't want to pile on, but for a group that's struggling to regain a foothold in the game this sure would be a fine opportunity to associate with a state-level project, one that will get plenty of favorable press (I'll see to it).  I understand that their coffers aren't exactly overflowing - whose are these days? - and while this project will need financial support down the road, it will also need expertise, manpower, and as wide and diverse a network as possible.  Plenty of ways for any individual or group to contribute.  QU, if you're listening, you really might want to give us a call.


Next update following the board meeting later this month.  Stay tuned...