Why is Alabama #1 in quail?
Alabama keeps more quail on farms than any other state โ and hardly any of them are dinner. The trail runs through cotton fields, brushy fence rows, pointing dogs, and a wild bird that lost its home.
Alabama's farms keep more quail than any other state's, with Georgia close behind. These are farm-raised bobwhite quail, counted the way USDA counts cows and chickens โ the wild quail out in the fields are not in this number. Check the ranking in the quiz below.
Basis: USDA NASS, Census of Agriculture (QUAIL - INVENTORY). The count, the full ranking and the source are on the quiz page.
Alabama's old farm landscape is what made it quail country. Open, plowed farmland was poor ground for deer and turkey, the Encyclopedia of Alabama says, but it created excellent habitat for bobwhite quail: common plowing practices left wide fence rows next to the fields, and those strips, along with fallow (resting) fields, were ideal for quail. Plantation owners copied wealthy European landowners and hunted them with pointing dogs: a bird that freezes until a hunter almost steps on it is a bird a dog can point at.
Who says so: Encyclopedia of Alabama (Auburn University) (opens in a new tab)
Then the ground changed. Alabama Extension's list: clean farming destroyed the brushy fencerows and enlarged the fields, non-native forage grasses replaced the native bunch grasses, and in many forests, dense trees and a lack of periodic prescribed burns reduced the habitat available to quail. Why does that matter to a bird? Quail scratch poorly, so their food has to sit on relatively bare soil in open-structured vegetation โ seeds buried under deep leaf litter might as well not be there.
Who says so: Alabama Cooperative Extension System (opens in a new tab)
So the wild bird's home mostly went away โ the Encyclopedia of Alabama says there is virtually no suitable quail habitat left in the state โ but the hunting did not. It moved onto shooting preserves, where pen-raised birds are released for organized hunts.
Who says so: Encyclopedia of Alabama (Auburn University) (opens in a new tab)
So who buys a farm quail? Penn State Extension lists the major markets: hunting preserves and field trials (dog competitions); people who buy live birds to train hunting dogs; people who want to restock birds in the wild. Meat and eggs are secondary markets. And because preserves, field trials and dog trainers want small, fast-flying quail, growers move the young chicks into flight pens.
Who says so: Penn State Extension (opens in a new tab)
Could the wild bird come back? Alabama Extension says management techniques can be used to increase quail populations in areas where they once existed, and the recipe is mostly about opening the ground again: burning part of the range in late winter, letting field edges go weedy and uncultivated, thinning woodlands until sunlight reaches the forest floor. A landowner who does all of it may get coveys (small flocks) back on that land โ which is not the same as the old quail country returning.
Who says so: Alabama Cooperative Extension System (opens in a new tab)
Fire has its own weather. Prescribed burning can be applied safely and effectively only when temperature, humidity and wind are all just right โ a burn window. USGS researchers project that across the south-eastern United States the share of suitable burning days may change little in winter but could drop substantially in summer as temperatures rise, shifting burning opportunities toward the cool-season months, with big differences from place to place.
Who says so: U.S. Geological Survey, Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center (opens in a new tab)
Note: a โtheoryโ, โfolkloreโ or โoutlookโ is not settled fact. Always check who is saying it.
๐ Sources for the rankings mentioned in this note (links to the original data and retrieval dates) are on each quiz page below.