Taking Flight

The Next 20 Years of Quail Forever


By Phil Bourjaily

The first time I stepped into a covey of quail, I was tired and trudging on a pheasant hunt. The dog flew by, missing the covey’s scent, so I had no advance warning when quail rose up from the ground around my feet. Before I made sense of what I was seeing, I thought actual clods of the earth were flying through the air, shrapnel from some quiet, buzzing explosion. As those brown chunks grew wings and resolved into quail, I emptied my unplugged Auto 5 without hitting a feather.

That instant of confusion was also a moment of clarity: quail are literally part of a fertile landscape. Without healthy ground beneath our feet, there can be no quail. As we move into Quail Forever’s next 20 years, healthy ground is in increasingly short supply. Threats to quail keep growing. Sprawling suburbs, vanishing grasslands, woody invasions, and increasingly industrial agriculture stand against a six-ounce bird.

“Now, in 2025, QF is fully-fledged, has stepped out from under its parent organization’s wing, and is in flight”

Coincidentally, I tripped over that covey in the fall of 1982. In that same year, Pheasants Forever was founded in response to widespread habitat loss from intensive, “clean” farming that was as harmful to quail as it was to pheasants.

As detailed in “Looking Back,” Pheasants Forever begat Quail Forever in 2005. It only made sense to form a separate team and strategy focused on quail, because quail and pheasant ranges don’t always overlap. Now, in 2025, QF is fully-fledged, has stepped out from under its parent organization’s wing, and is in flight.

In fact, 20 years from now QF may overshadow Pheasants Forever for simple reasons of geography: bobwhites are found in 26 states, and other quail species live throughout the west and the southwest. And, while the attachment those of us from pheasant country feel for wild ringnecks runs deep, it doesn’t match the bond people feel with native quail, especially bobwhites.

Years ago, I read a conservation column entitled “The Dragons Are Bigger Today.” If I remember right, it was written in the early 1970s, about the time Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, told farmers to plant fencerow to fencerow, and to “get big or get out.” If the author thought the dragons were big then, he should see how they’ve grown.

In the intervening years, agricultural operations have shifted from family farms to industrial businesses. Bobwhite quail populations have dropped 85% since Butz was named Ag Secretary in 1971. As quail numbers drop, so do quail hunter numbers. People of my generation can remember coming home from school, grabbing a shotgun, calling the dog, and hunting out their back door. Many of them are deer and turkey hunters today, and their kennels stand empty.

As the threats to quail grow, so does the organization that has their back. By 2030, Quail Forever President and CEO Marilyn Vetter says there will be 900 Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever chapters, with up to 40% of the membership devoted to quail. It’s tough to see as far as 20 years down the road, but Vetter speculates that there may be 1200 PF/QF chapters by then, with an evenly split membership.

Threats to Quail

We can’t let ourselves feel overwhelmed by the steep decline of bobwhites, but first, we have to stop the bleeding. “At this point, winning means not losing more ground,” says Vetter. “It’s hard to achieve a hockey-stick shaped curve in population trends, but we can start edging up.”

QF follows a hub and spoke model to restore bobwhite habitat. First, you protect the hubs where good habitat exists and expand them by improving surrounding acres. Then you work to connect these islands of habitat to other hubs. Connectivity lets quail move safely without running into hard edges of habitat that force them to cross open fields where they’re vulnerable to predators and weather.

Vetter adds an encouraging note when she points out that in many places, bringing quail back is easier than restoring pheasant populations. “Pheasants need large grasslands,” she says, “Quail need a patchwork quilt. Leave some dirty edges, and quail can survive.” Those dirty edges can be a win-win for wildlife and farmers, since those marginal edge acres often produce poorly, cutting into farm profits by requiring costly inputs. High-tech tools like precision agriculture can help growers see which acres make them money, and which are a waste of expensive seed, fuel, and fertilizer.

Quail restoration can be high tech, and quail restoration can be quite simple, even literally elemental. Western birds need water. “The best thing you can do for western quail is a rain dance,” says Quail Forever’s Chief Conservation Officer, Ron Leathers. Leathers says building small rock “zeedyk structures” in watercourses can slow erosion and slow the speed at which water rushes off the landscape, helping to “re-wet the sponge” and keep the desert fertile for all life.

Birds of the southeast and the plains need open grasslands. In other words, bobwhites in the south desperately need fire. Among the pine forests of the southeast, quail have long been known as “fire birds” because of the way fire promotes the early successional habitat that quail rely on.

In Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma fire is the answer to melting the “green glacier” spreading across the northwestern part of the bobwhite’s range. Native evergreens, unchecked by fire, sprout in pastures and clog ravines. I can tell you first-hand how thick they can become, because two springs ago in Nebraska a friend and I crawled into one of those cedar-choked draws behind turkey fans after a tom. It was thick enough that we didn’t see a 20-pound gobbler until we were four yards away from it. Brush thick enough to hide a turkey right in front of you is too thick to benefit grassland birds.

Fire and chainsaws can reclaim those lands for quail, but it’s a lot of work. Leathers alludes to what may be QF’s greatest challenge over the next 20 years when he says, “It’s easier for some people to cut checks than to cut cedars.”

The Future

Quail Forever will always be habitat focused, on hubs, spokes, and connectivity. “Connectivity,” as Leathers hinted at when he talked about people being more willing to write checks than to fire up chainsaws, means a great deal more than connecting one piece of habitat to the next. It means keeping people connected to quail. Maintaining and strengthening that connection may be QF’s biggest challenge in the next 20 years and the key to bringing all six quail back to the land.

When Leathers talked about QF’s work for western birds, the very first initiative he mentioned was work to improve hunter access to public grounds blocked by private holdings. I had expected him to talk about traditional habitat projects. I mentioned this to Vetter, who was unsurprised. “People won’t value public land if they can’t access it,” she said.

Without people who value quail, QF’s work is impossible. The decline in bobwhites comes at a time when volunteerism of all kinds has hit a 30-year low in the U.S., with volunteerism rates in rural areas among the lowest of all. Quail Forever and Pheasants Forever were founded on a volunteer model, in which money raised came back to local chapters. One of the biggest changes in the way QF operates now is that without enough volunteers, QF teams have to do the hands-on work.

This decline in volunteerism comes at a time when quail and conservation need a grassroots movement composed of people who value quail, who will work for them, and who will vote for wildlife-friendly politicians and practices. QF, says Vetter, only has three employees in Washington, D.C. instead of an army of lobbyists. “You don’t have to shout to be heard,” she says, “and besides, our members should be our voice.”

“If a movement is to have an impact, it must belong to those who join it not just those who lead it.”

- Simon Sinek

Therefore, it is no surprise that maintaining a core of hunters, the most passionate of quail conservationists, is a QF priority. Creating new hunting opportunities through Build-a-Wildlife-Area programs, recruiting hunters through R3 initiatives, fighting for access, and supporting Farm Bill initiatives like “Open Fields” all keep hunters in the field, maintaining their connection with wild quail. In turn, hunters play an important part in rural economies. Motel and restaurant owners in towns like Cheyenne, Oklahoma and Sonoita, Arizona depend on quail hunter dollars. Healthy rural communities benefit quail when locals value quail and participate in conservation.

People without a consumptive or bottom-line interest in quail feel a strong attachment to them, too. Vetter says she has seen ranchers grow misty-eyed with nostalgia when they heard whistling bobs at habitat workshops. We love quail because they are underdogs, and there’s no denying they are up against a lot. In 20 years, we could see that hockey-stick curve begin to climb, or we could see birds flatline, until they’re only found on plantations and preserves.

Quail Forever understands how to improve habitat, and the organization also knows that it will take more than mere technical know-how to bring birds back over the next two decades. It will take a movement. In her presentations, Vetter likes to end with this quote from motivational speaker Simon Sinek: “If a movement is to have an impact, it must belong to those who join it not just those who lead it.”

QF is ready to lead us into the next 20 years. We have to follow, to join it, and to give time and money of our own. Without us doing our part there won’t be another young hunter someday in the future wondering why the ground at their feet has sprouted wings.

This story originally appeared in the Winter 2024-25 issue of Quail Forever Journal




 

Phil Bourjaily is the shotgun editor for Field & Stream and Ducks Unlimited. He lives in eastern Iowa with his wife and his German shorthair. He is still discombobulated whenever he bumps into quail on a pheasant hunt around home.