Jeff Powelson graduated from college years ago, but in the next 8 months, the Missouri Department of Conservation’s private lands biologist and other his peers will get an education like no other as they complete a comprehensive study of bobwhite quail and their habitat from various locations in Missouri.

The project which began in early October is the first of its kind in Missouri not only because of its sheer size, but also because it is being done on private property. “(MDC) has done studies on public lands, but what about the private landowner who’s actively managing their property?” Powelson said.

MDC has done quail studies focused on public lands for several years. The managers of these areas wanted to verify that their current thought process on managing for quail and upland birds was in line with what the quail needed.

With this concept in mind, Powelson and others from the Private Lands Section of MDC met with Regional Directors of Quail Unlimited and the project took flight. MDC and Quail Unlimited are hoping the study will reveal a wealth of updated information on the quail, their habitat and current management practices.

“As biologists and land managers, we were all formally educated with information that dates back to the 1930s, and we’re still using this information today,” Powelson said. “This project will help us determine how changes to the land, land use and the scale of land use relate to quail and their habitat.

“The project should help us to better see the future of not only bobwhite quail management but all upland birds.”

The study will focus on three sights around the state.

“In our region, we are using a farm in Andrew County, and we’ll be focusing on studying actively managed CRP,” Powelson said. “Private Lands Biologists in Cass County and Osage County will also be participating in the project and will be monitoring other habitats such as CP33 Wildlife Buffers and managed timber with small fields and fescue conversions.”

Each of the three sites are currently in the process of trapping live native quail from their respective farms. The biologists at all three locations were provided with 14 radio telemetry tags which will be placed on the quail before releasing them back into their habitat.

Once the birds are banded, Powelson — along with significant help from the students of the Missouri Western State University Wildlife Society — will locate each bird once or twice a week for the next eight months.

“It’s very labor intensive to track these birds. Sometimes I’ll walk in large circles for nearly an hour until I’m able to triangulate the specific location the birds are holding in.” Powelson said.

One of the primary goals for this project is to see where the quail are in relation to the nearest change of cover or transition area.

“Whether its 5 feet, 10 feet or 100 yards, it’s going to be neat to see how far they travel in this time period,” Powelson said.

Quail are associated with edges. This has been known since the ’30s. What Powelson and others want to look at is how much time is spent in this edge habitat. Do they spend more time in woody edge, grass edge or along the field edges in the middle of fields? Also, what management techniques work the best?

With the study only in its second month, Powelson already has discovered something interesting.

“We’ve noticed how significant woody cover, and not just woody cover, but live woody cover, is to area bobwhite quail,” he said. “The information we’re discovering through this project will be invaluable for managing these birds throughout their entire range.”

Powelson noted that projects such as this would not be possible without the assistance of organizations like Quail Unlimited, which donated nearly $10,000 of locally raised funds to pay for the needed equipment.

Populations of northern bobwhite and other bird species with similar habitat requirements have declined over the past several decades. That happened in part because of changes in agricultural activities that produced landscapes dominated by large crop fields, annually overused hayfields and heavily grazed pastures of tall fescue.

As a result, wildlife habitat characterized by shrub thickets, bare ground, fields with a diversity of grasses, forbs, legumes and crops and ungrazed woodlots is not as abundant as it once was, according to MDC. For those wanting more information on the northern bobwhite or how to actively manage your property to help these beautiful game birds, log onto to www.mdc.mo.gov/landown/wild/quail.

Jeff Leonard can be reached at outdoors@npgco.com