Quail Sighting

[JIvers]

I was walking along a brushy slough bordering a patch of hay ground on some family ground in Fillmore County this weekend, and kicked up a covey of probably a dozen bobwhite quail that were sitting in an overgrown fence line. These were the first quail I have seen anywhere in southeast Minnesota in over twenty years.

I see quail on occasion down here in southern Iowa, but they are not numerous in this area.

Quail were not especially plentiful in the 1980s where I was growing up in Fillmore County, but seeing them, especially in brushy fencerows, windbreaks, or sloughs, was not a huge deal. Then the fencerows, brushy strips, and other quail habitat started coming out, and the quail disappeared.

I know the Minnesota DNR is trying to preserve the remnants of the quail population in the SE corner of the state--I just read an article about it last week--and right on cue I actually see some. Maybe when I am deer-hunting in two weeks I will see my first gray fox there in ten years, or my first jackrabbit in close to twenty years.

[TylerS]

Cool! I'd always heard that bobwhites weren't considered native to MN, so you could shoot them if you saw them. At least, that's what I remember hearing growing up. Probably along the same lines as folks who said you couldn't throw back suckers if you caught them because they were trash fish. I don't know.

[WallyGator12000]

Northern bobwhite quail are protected and can't be killed. Other types of quail are not protected and can be taken at any time.

We hunt a farm in Houston County that used to have quail on it. The farmer said he saw the first quail he'd seen in years sometime earlier this fall. It would be really cool if they could re-establish themselves there.

[Dotch]

We've seen them 2 or 3 times at our place in SC MN over the last 30 years although I suspect they may have been released birds. We do have some brushy cover and fencerows locally but doubt it's enough to sustain any population. Those areas are diminishing with each day it seems. I grew up in Fillmore Co. near Spring Valley and bobwhites appeared occasionally in the 1970's. My sister and neighbor also released some so again, hard telling what their origins might have been. Bumped into some that were whistling this past summer in OH on the Pro Farmer Crop Tour. When I whistled back and the bobwhites responded the crew was most amused.