Stone Prairie Sees First Quail Harvest

MAYFLOWER — The second weekend of December saw the first harvest of quail on Stone Prairie Wildlife Management Area, where habitat work since the land acquisition by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission in 2016 has focused on quail restoration.

James Cheatham of Glen Rose and his father, one of two groups that hunted in December, took six birds over the two days.

“This is the first year we opened it for hunting,” Clint Johnson, the AGFC’s quail program coordinator, said.

The second permit hunt, scheduled for January, coincided with one of the bigger snowstorms central Arkansas has seen in many years. The 8-10 inches of snow made things difficult for Jim Smith of Sherwood, who had won a permit for the second hunt but only stayed out a couple of hours with his 5-year-old English setter, Max.

Luckily for the first pair of hunters in December, Smith and Max were available to accompany them on the first hunt. It turns out that while Cheatham had won the December permit, he didn’t have a birddog to point out the quail.

Smith was acquainted with AGFC biologist Kaleb Ward at the Camp Robinson Special Use Area, which is in close proximity to Stone Prairie WMA and is a place where Smith often works his dog. “He knew I was an ol’ quail hunter and had a birddog and told me, ‘Hey we’re going to have a quail hunt at Stone Prairie.’ I’d also seen a film about it with (the AGFC’s Trey Reid), he had that little spot on TV right before the permit drawing took place. So I put in for a permit but, of course, I didn’t get drawn.

“However, someone else gets drawn and Kaleb mentioned, ‘They may not have a birddog. You should call Clint (Johnson).’ So I did and that worked out good.
“We had a real nice hunt, just us three,” Smith said, adding that the limit on quail at Stone Prairie was 4 per each hunter each of two days (the statewide limit is 6) and he didn’t hunt. “We found a couple of coveys of quail. My dog pointed them. They couldn’t start on Saturday until James got off work so we only had a little time in the afternoon. Sunday, we chased them a while and got into a couple of coveys and some singles.

“Now, I’m trying to find James a birddog. He wants a birddog now.”

Cheatham was also going to be the second adult on the hunt with Smith in early January until the snowstorm intervened. “When that snow arrived, he said he’d had something come up,” Smith said, leaving just Smith and Max to brave the snowy landscape.

“Clint was out there that day. You just can’t really hunt quail with that kind of snow on the ground, and you don’t really need to be out there messing with them in that kind of weather. Dogs have a hard time and don’t really move in that. I went out a couple of hours Saturday and didn’t go back the next day. Clint and I got to visit a while on Saturday, though.”

Smith, who grew up hunting quail in Alabama in the 1960s and ‘70s, was glad to see the work that’s been done at Stone Prairie to restore quail habitat. He says he doesn’t do much quail hunting in Arkansas any more — “I just haven’t had much luck here” — but he says he did years ago, along with taking quail hunting trips to Texas and Oklahoma as well as to shooting preserves in the region “where they turn the quail loose. I do a little of that.”

“I live in Sherwood so I’m real close and real familiar with it,” he said of Stone Prairie. “I go out to the (Camp Robinson) SUA a lot to train my dog, put him on some quail out there when they aren’t running field trials. Stone Prairie is looking like quail country. I guess they are doing what they can. They are doing a good job.”

The permits at Stone Prairie, Johnson said, were set up for four people with only two being adults, to emphasize having a quail hunting opportunity for youth hunters. Regulations included a stipulation allowing non-hunting dog handlers to not count toward the hunter number, knowing that many would-be quail hunters would need to find a dog and handler. Similar permit hunts were scheduled for Little Bayou WMA in Ashley County as well, but Little Bayou may have had worse weather, especially for the second hunt. Johnson said that Marcus Asher, an AGFC biologist, found two coveys of quail in December.

“We didn’t stock them, or anywhere else we are doing habitat work,” Johnson said of the quail found on Stone Prairie. “The place had quail on it when we acquired it. It probably has two or three times the number of birds since we acquired it. We’re pretty happy with that place.”

Johnson said he and AGFC staff did over 500 acres of hack-and-squirt work to restore degraded forest to post oak woodland and another 175 acres of fescue eradication. “We’ve burned on an 18-month rotation since we acquired the property,” he added. Stone Prairie totals 989 acres.

Smith said, “I’m 77 and grew up in Alabama and I’ve seen real quail habitat. The reason we don’t have much habitat now, that’s not y’all’s fault or anybody’s fault, it’s just the times … You can drive out around north Pulaski County to Stone Prairie and Camp Robinson and the farm fields around there used to have soybeans in them; now it’s just old hayfields and the fencerows are all cut. But it used to be real good habitat.

“It just takes decent habitat. The rest will take care of itself. The habitat just drives the quail.”

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CUTLINES:

HUNTERS
Jim Smith of Sherwood (left) and his setter Max, helped James Cheatham of Glen Rose and his father harvest the first northern bobwhite from Stone Prairie WMA since its acquisition in 2016.  Photo courtesy Clint Johnson.

WOODS
Images from before and after forest stand improvements show the change from a shaded barren forest floor to one full of beneficial plants thanks to increased sunlight. Photo courtesy Clint Johnson. 

HACK-AND-SQUIRT
Biologists removed undesirable trees from the forest through a method known as “hack and squirt” where a tree is injected with herbicide to kill it without affecting surrounding trees or vegetation.