So far, so good for turkey, quail in Texas
Every newly hatched quail chick or turkey poult is something of a miracle. And simply making it into the world is just the first hurdle these groundnesting birds face when they peck their way onto the Texas landscape.
Just how many of these miracles appear during the nesting season of late spring through summer and how many of them survive to see their first Thanksgiving depends greatly on how much help they and the hen that hatched them get from one of Texas’ most capricious factors — weather. When, where and how much rain falls on the land, how cold the winter and how hot the summer play major roles in fixing those odds.
This year, those odds appear to be “average,” a word seldom used over the last several years to describe Texas weather or quail and turkey production. And “average” is not necessarily a bad thing unless you are a quail chick or turkey poult looking at your average chances of surviving to adulthood.
“The odds they face are pretty stunning,” Jason Hardin, who heads turkey programs for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said of a turkey or quail simply being born, much less surviving. From the time a hen lays her first egg in a nest — and lays another 10 or so at a rate of one per day — to the time that clutch hatches after being incubated for 28 days or so (fewer for quail), that first egg sits vulnerable for more than five weeks.
Unless that nest is well hidden in thick grasses and other vegetative cover whose abundance and lushness is determined largely by weather, predation from egg-eating rat snakes, skunks, raccoons and even feral hogs can claim the clutch, and, sometimes, the hen that sits upon it.
Those eggs require at least a fairly humid environment around them for the embryo to properly develop, meaning there has to be some ground moisture provided by rain and shaded by vegetation from quick evaporation.
The temperature can’t be too cold or, more often a problem in Texas, too hot.
Even in a good year, 60 percent of turkey nests fail.
“If you can get 40 percent nesting success, that’s really good,” Hardin said.
Young ones need help
And when the quail chicks and turkey poults hatch, they need an abundance of high-protein food to fuel their growth to a point where they can develop and use their ability to fly to improve their chances of survival. Rain drives overall insect abundance, too.
For a turkey poult, it usually takes about two weeks for the young bird to develop the flight feathers it needs to make its first weak and clumsy flight, following its mother onto a tree limb, where it roosts, relatively safe from predators.
“Until those birds can fly, they are very vulnerable to mortality,” Hardin said.
The quicker they can fly, the higher their odds of survival.
If the birds are born in great habitat, where they don’t have to go far to find an abundance of insects and expose themselves to predation, they grow fast enough to be roosting off the ground as soon as 10 days after hatching. In poor habitat with poor nutrition, it can take three weeks. That extra time on the ground and the longer distances they have to travel to find food increases their vulnerability to predation and decreases their odds of survival, Hardin said.
Outlook promising
So how have the birds fared this year?
“Overall, things look pretty good. Not great but not bad, either,” Hardin said of this year’s turkey hatch.
Quail seem to be enjoying an average year, too.
“Texas is a big state, and conditions vary even within local regions,” Robert Perez, TPWD’s upland game bird program leader, said of Texas’ quail-nesting efforts and success. “But if I had to make a general assessment, I’d say this year looks to be average to above average.”
Weather, and not just this year’s weather, has been a major factor in how this nesting season has gone for both groundnesting game birds.
“We’re coming off of a stretch of three very good years in a row in most of the state,” Perez said. “That’s set us up in good shape.”
Persistent drought conditions that began in the 1990s and continued with only short-lived, localized breaks in much of the state, peaking with the record-setting drought and heat of 2011, finally broke in the summer of 2013. In 2012, quail populations in Texas hit their nadir. That was reflected by the record low number of only 21,000 quail hunters going afield during Texas’ 2102-13 quail season, down from a peak of as many as a quarter of a million quail hunters in the early 1980s.
But three “wet” years, when timely rains fell on Texas’ best quail habitat in the Rolling Plains and South Texas Brush Country as well as the Trans-Pecos and Coastal prairies/plains followed. That welcome moisture triggered an explosion of vegetation, including native bunchgrasses crucial to quail. Quail populations, especially in the Rolling Plains and South Texas, skyrocketed.
Similarly, Texas’ Rio Grande turkeys have benefited from what has been a combination of timely rains and, just as crucial, a series of mild winters, spring and summers. Texas Rio Grande turkeys enjoyed outstanding nesting success over the past three years, with what Hardin termed a “phenomenal” hatch in 2015.
This year started out much like the last three, with a generally mild, wet winter that gave adult quail and turkeys good habitat conditions and the nutrition they needed to build body conditions for the rigors of nesting. That late-winter, early-spring nutrition, much of which comes from high-protein forbs and other greenery as well as insects, is especially crucial for hens.
“Hens need a diet of 13 percent crude protein just to survive,” Hardin said. “They need 23 percent crude protein to produce eggs.”
Hen population up
Across most of Texas, hen turkey and quail went into this year’s mating and nesting season in good physical condition. And there were a lot of hens, thanks to the stretch of three consecutive “good” years.
“We have a lot of brood stock out there, thanks to those good years of production, especially those birds from 2015,” Hardin said of Rio Grande turkey.
“There was a lot of carryover from this past year, which was just a tremendous year in some parts of the state,” Perez said of quail. “That gave us a good start.”
Said Hardin: “We saw an early green-up in a lot of places, and that helped set things up for a good year. And spring was generally mild.”
In good habitat conditions, quail and turkey have an extended nesting season, with hens that lose their nests to predations often re-nesting, sometimes multiple times.
That has happened — is happening — in some areas this year.
“People are reporting seeing multiple age-classes (of quail chicks),” Perez said, noting that indicates an extended nesting season and re-nesting efforts. “It looks like an average or maybe aboveaverage hatch, depending on where you are. But it doesn’t look like a bust, for sure.”
The same applies to turkeys, Hardin said.
“We’ve had some hens re-nest as much as four times,” he said. “This year’s looking good. At least average.”
But strong and successful nesting efforts have not been as near universal this year as in recent years. Rainfall patterns across most of the best quail and turkey habitat in Texas have been erratic.
Some areas — South Texas, the lower Edwards Plateau, the coastal sand plains and portions of the Crosstimbers — have been widely blessed with timely rains and, so far, relatively mild temperatures. Nesting effort and success appear to have benefited in those areas, Hardin and Perez said.
Other regions, especially the Rolling Plains, have seen much more variable conditions. Some areas of the Rolling Plains have been dry for the last month or more, and it has had and is having an effect on habitat and quail nesting and survival.
Weather is crucial
The next two months will be crucial to telling how many of this year’s quail chicks and turkey poults make it to their first autumn. The heart of Texas summer is beginning, and that can be a make or break stretch for young birds.
“If it dries up or you get extreme temperatures, that definitely can affect survival,” Perez said. “The best thing that could happen is avoiding any extended extreme hot temperatures and get a little rain when we need it.”
Perez notes that this year has been a more normal year for Texas weather than just about any in the last decade-plus.
“From about 1992 until 2013 or so, we were in a drought most of the time,” he said. “Since then, we’ve been on a run of wetter than normal years. This year’s more like what you’d consider ‘average,’ if there is such a thing.”
Hardin agrees and notes this “average” year for Texas quail and turkey isn’t a negative thing.
“If you have a couple of consecutive ‘great’ years, like we’ve had, and follow that with an ‘average’ year, the birds are going to be in good shape,” he said.
But it will be a couple of long and hopefully not too hot months until we know for sure.