Sherman Hammond has the blues. In fact, this Fort Stockton, Texas, rancher has so many scaled, or blue, quail that biologists are trying to verify why so they can help others in quail country do what he does.
Unlike thousands of square miles of ranchland in his arid corner of the world, Hammond's 33,000-acre ranch has maintained good quail numbers over the years, even through drought.
The Hammond Ranch is the subject of a landmark study by Texas A&M biologist Dale Rollins and Angelo State University grad student Bobby Buntyn. But even without all the facts from their study, Hammond and the biologists are pretty sure why his place is teeming with blues while neighboring ranches have seen big declines.
It's because the rancher has limited cattle grazing and has created quail oases that trap water behind low "spreader dams" scattered throughout his operation.
"My objective is to keep all the water on this place, whether it rains here or comes from my neighbors," says Hammond.
"I'm turning 14 inches of annual rainfall into 30 inches by holding it behind these dams."
The ranch was run down when Hammond and his wife, Nancy, took over its management in 1980. The land was mostly overgrazed greasewood flats, as much of West Texas was then and is now. Downpours would hit and run off hard-packed alkaline soils, never soaking into the ground.
"Water used to go right down the road every time it rained," says this rancher. Gullies and washes were the norm.
"So I built humps in these ranch roads to stop it," Hammond says. "I discovered that I was creating something beneficial to the roads, but also to livestock and, according to Rollins, to the quail. These spreader dams are catching water, and they are creating quail oases."
Using his D-5 Caterpillar, Hammond has built gentle spreader dams all over his ranch. He doesn't even know how many, but they number in the thousands. He started on caliche roads with nothing more than low humps, 8 inches high, extending across the road and several feet to either side to trap flowing water. Over the years, those dams have become more widespread and sophisticated, placed with leveling instruments and connected in some spots to trap water more efficiently.
Rainwater collects in shallow scrapes behind each dam, where soil was dug for building it. Grass and forbs grow where water pools and soaks into the ground. Here insects gather and multiply. These provide a smorgasbord for quail chicks, which must have the protein the insects provide for the first two weeks of their lives. Hammond has been careful not to dig too deep—usually no more than 12 inches—because he doesn't want earth so soggy that it suffocates plant roots.
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According to Buntyn and Rollins, these oases provide other things the quail need as well. They produce nesting cover such as dry standing tobosagrass under thorny catclaw acacia bushes.
These bushes shield hens and their broods from hawks and other predators. Also, quail can loaf, scratch and dust in adjacent bare soils and then dash back under thorny cover when danger looms. Hammond's oases seem to be nearly ideal quail houses.
And these are spreading. Grass is growing out from the initial moist spots. The oases have also given Hammond's cows and calves more groceries. By stocking lightly and resting pastures so cattle don't cherry-pick the ice cream plants and eat anything edible down to nubbins, he has actually boosted carrying capacity. It's a win-win deal.
"We defer one-third of this ranch each year during the growing season, which is April to Nov. 1," says Hammond. "In a typical year, we're the last to start feeding our cattle and the first to stop.
"In time your better grasses will take over," the rancher continues. "But it took a long time to screw this up, and it will take a long time to bring it back."
The entire ranch itself is an oasis in the desert. It's a place where scouting groups and other youngsters camp and catch fish from Hammond's ponds.
"I like to see the grass grow and the wildlife flourish," he says. "A lot of people think you can't have cattle and wildlife. You darn sure can."
Stopping Quail Decline
While blue quail numbers fall in the more arid reaches of the Southwest, their brother the bobwhite is suffering a similar fate nearly throughout its huge range. In fact, the only three places where the bob is holding its own are South Texas, the Texas rolling plains and western Oklahoma.
Quail hunting provides critical income to many landowners, but the need to bring back these game birds goes deeper than that. Rollins says other wild birds are declining alongside bobwhites and blues, possibly for the same reasons.
What is the reason for the decline? It varies with location, but there are several known culprits.
"In the Southeast, habitat change has hurt," says Rollins. "Converting land to pure pine plantations and introducing Coastal bermudagrass and other tame pastures have had serious effects.
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"It's a point of contention, but many people believe an increase in varmints such as raccoons, skunks, opossums and foxes has had a big effect. And as you shrink quail populations down, those populations become more vulnerable to hunting."
Grazing mismanagement—mostly overgrazing—in much of the Southwest also takes much of the blame.
"Nature controls half of a quail's fate, mostly through rainfall here in the Southwest," says Rollins. "It's up to man to control the other half, and we haven't exactly been hitting home runs with our half."
Landowners in fire-ant country say this imported scourge is quail's biggest enemy. Biologists have mixed opinions.
"Of direct concern is that they attack and kill young chicks just pipping out of their eggs," says Rollins. "A more insidious concern is their effect on insects and other arthropods quail chicks rely on for food."