The public school teachers came to the Arkansas State University campus in Jonesboro from as far away as Hamburg on the first Saturday in June, anxious to learn about the history and culture of quail hunting in Arkansas. I had wasted no time accepting the invitation to speak since quail hunting was such an important part of my early years.
When I was a boy, it simply was called "bird hunting." You didn't have to ask what the bird was in those days. It was the bobwhite.
My favorite meal was fried quail with rice and gravy. A Christmas morning brunch tradition at our house was having fried quail with grits. In 1967, when I was 8 and just starting to hunt with my father, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission conducted an annual breeding survey in which it recorded almost 30 quail per mile. By 1982, the last year I seriously hunted quail, the number was down to seven birds per mile. It's now one or less.
Thousands of words have been written in recent years about what happened. I think it's a combination of factors. What I hope will come out of the debate is that members of the commission will make quail restoration a priority, especially given the role quail hunting played in the rural culture of Arkansas during the 20th Century.
Quail restoration has never been as high a priority as the restoration of deer and wild turkey were in the last century. Deer were among the species that were almost gone when the Legislature created the Game and Fish Commission on March 11, 1915. By 1930, the deer population was down to about 500 animals statewide. Now, more than 200,000 deer are killed by hunters each year.
The early 1930s also represented a low point for turkeys. In 1932, 30 wild turkeys from Mississippi and North Dakota were released at wildlife refuges. In 1940-41, 694 pen-raised wild turkeys from a farm in Missouri were released in Arkansas. Those efforts were unsuccessful, but initiatives in which wild birds were caught at baited sites and then relocated proved more fruitful. By 2003, almost 20,000 wild turkeys were killed in Arkansas.
The Game and Fish Commission also likes to tout its efforts to bring bear and elk to the state. Arkansas once was known as the Bear State, but by the 1930s the only native bears were along the lower White River. Relocation efforts began in 1959, and there was a large enough population by 1980 to have a hunting season. It's now estimated that there are more than 5,000 bears in the state. Arkansas began importing elk in 1981, and elk hunting returned to the state in 1998 for the first time since the 1800s with a current herd of 600.
The Game and Fish Commission deserves praise for its work with deer, turkey, bear, elk and even alligators. The black eye that's not mentioned is the drastic reduction in the quail population during the past four decades. Earlier this year, Don McKenzie of Ward, the executive director of the National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative, spoke to members of the Game and Fish Commission. Bryan Hendricks wrote in this newspaper: "Usually, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission limits presentations at its public meetings to 10 minutes or less, but Don McKenzie held it spellbound for nearly 40 minutes. More important, he gave the commission optimism that it can revitalize bobwhite quail populations in Arkansas."
A potential bright spot is the effort at Pea Ridge National Military Park in Northwest Arkansas to restore the landscape to its 1862 appearance. Cedar and fescue are being removed, which should benefit quail. The removal of cedar trees has allowed new vegetation to emerge. Controlled burns also are taking place. McKenzie told commissioners during his testimony that quail hunting is "as much a part of life in the South as barbecue, NASCAR, fried catfish and SEC football. In our generation, we're letting that tradition slip through the cracks. It's fading, and that's a problem."
I agree. I loved bird hunting with my dad. I knew I was becoming a man when he would let me take our pickup and bird dogs out alone. When the dogs were good, they were a joy to watch. Having one dog point a covey of quail with the partner backing him up on a crisp day was almost a religious experience. When the dogs weren't so good, they taught us patience and humility.
Our hunting pants were torn from barbwire fences, but quail hunting made us feel like rich Southern gentlemen. The farms where we hunted near the Ouachita River southeast of Arkadelphia had it all. There were fields of cotton and soybeans. There were creeks and tall stands of bottomland hardwoods. We would pick black walnuts and even take a few turnip greens from the riverside patches. It was a magical place for a boy to spend time with his father. In his 2002 book Hunting Arkansas, Keith Sutton wrote: "We may never see the glory days of bobwhite quail hunting our fathers and grandfathers experienced earlier. Habitat loss has taken a heavy toll, and day when you could park on a hilltop and find eight or nine coveys within sight of the vehicle are long since passed."
I often think about the fun times outdoors with my dad and how he taught me to clean quail as we stood outside under a large light on winter Saturday nights. I think about how fortunate I was to grow up roaming the south Arkansas countryside. And I think it's high time the Game and Fish Commission make quail restoration a priority. Nobody claims it will be easy. Restoring a lost part of a state's culture never is.
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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the director of corporate communications for Simmons First National Corp. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 07/15/2015