Cautiously Optimistic: Quail in the Southeast Part 2

Speak the Language Podcast

Last week we took our first in depth look into the story of Quail here in the southeast. We heard from a man who has lived and hunted quail in Mississippi long enough to recall a time when you woudn’t catch an odd look for pulling up to a Mississippi gas station with an english pointer in your truck. We also heard from a man who was born in raised in Tennessee, and grew an interest in quail mainly from the stories from his dad on how things used to be. Last week’s episode was meant to pull on your heart strings a tad, to possibly get you thinking about a type of hunting that maybe you haven’t tried yet. and maybe you haven’t tried it because it’s not readilly available to you like deer, squirrel, or turkey hunting is. Unfortunately, if you live in Mississippi or most other places in the southeast, it’s not readily available to you. But it used to be. This week we are going to dig hard into the question of why? why did we lose our quail and what caused it But first, before we dive in, I’m going to pose few questions to make you think and also get mind rolling in the right direction for what you’re going to hear in this episode. If you were to hop in your vehicle and take a drive around your neighborhood, down the local highway or interstate, down and old country road maybe- if you looked out the window- what would you see? Buildings? ag fields? pasture? blocks of timber? Whatever you see around where you live. Have you ever stopped to think if it’s always been that way? I’ve come to learn that what we grow up with we tend to assume that that’s just simply the way things have always been. The Mississippi that I’ve pretty much known my entire life has been dominated by vast stretches of pine plantation- but when I stop and think about it- it can’t have been like that always. that doesn’t occur naturally. so what was there before? What was there before? and if it hasn’t always been that way, what effects did it have when we made it that way?