Apologize to all, but there are some points in this discussion that are pretty "hot button" for me because I have struggled with them for too many years and they never go away. One is the concept of domestic birds and the other is trap and transplant of bobwhite. Neither work. The science demonstrates that. Trap and transplant requires more bobwhites that most people can imagine. For example, Ohio has been trying to establish bobwhite on a large reclaimed strip mine WMA for somewhere close to 20 years. To date I believe the total number of WILD bobwhite they have trapped and moved from private land (nuclear power plant) in KS is a minimum of 2,000. They still don't have a population and after this winter's weather they may not have any. I consulted w/ them back in 1997 on this project because they were having problems. I can tell you that the habitat on this area is A++ so it isn't the habitat. It's the sheer lack of numbers of bobwhites per release. Kansas agency and its director committed political suicide by permitting OH to do this on private land that is closed to hunting. Even there, with a stable population and far higher density than anywhere in TN, they are unable to trap enough bobwhites in a fall trapping period to get critical mass. There's know way we can imagine building up enough birds on any area in this state to trap and transfer. The only way, based on my assessment of the last century's quail research is to start where we have them and slowly and agonizingly build them outward across as much landscape as we can. That's a slow process but the only one that will work. By the way, the ruffed grouse transplants to W TN were largely a dismal failure. There are occasional reports of them but there still continues to be no viable population. Same with W KY and S IL. Illinois, which has some of the same habitat at we have in W TN has never established a population there; they started in the 1930's. IN had a good population of grouse in the 50's-80' but they have slowly declined and have all but crashed. where they had huntable numbers in the 70's they have no more birds than we do; scattered reports. Roger D. Applegate Small Game Coordinator Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency Ellington Agricultural Center PO Box 40747 Nashville, TN 37204 PH: 615/781-6616 FAX: 615/781-6654 Email: roger.applegate@xxxxxxxxxxx UPS Address: 440 Hogan Road Nashville, TN 37220 FedEx Address: 5107 Edmonson Pike Nashville, TN 37211 =================NOTES TO SUBSCRIBER===================== The TN-Bird Net requires you to SIGN YOUR MESSAGE with first and last name, CITY (TOWN) and state abbreviation. You are also required to list the COUNTY in which the birds you report were seen. The actual DATE OF OBSERVATION should appear in the first paragraph. _____________________________________________________________ To post to this mailing list, simply send email to: tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx _____________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, send email to: tn-bird-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field. ______________________________________________________________ TN-Bird Net is owned by the Tennessee Ornithological Society Neither the society(TOS) nor its moderator(s) endorse the views or opinions expressed by the members of this discussion group. Moderator: Wallace Coffey, Bristol, TN wallace@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ------------------------------ Assistant Moderator Andy Jones Cleveland, OH ------------------------------- Assistant Moderator Dave Worley Rosedale, VA __________________________________________________________ Visit the Tennessee Ornithological Society web site at http://www.tnbirds.org * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ARCHIVES TN-Bird Net Archives at //www.freelists.org/archives/tn-bird/ MAP RESOURCES Tenn.Counties Map at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/states/tennessee3.gif Aerial photos to complement google maps http://local.live.com _____________________________________________________________