More on the Mearns
After reading the column on Mearns quail (“Limits on Mearns Quail Need to Change” by Dave Brown, Feb. 2024) I had to respond with a major impact that was missed by the author. One of the major impacts on Mearns populations are outfitters or guides.
I have known many of them over the years and have found some to be very tough on the Mearns populations. Some guides have told me that they only allow their clients to shoot one bird out of a covey rise. That sounds very conservative, but if the guide takes other clients out to hunt the same covey multiple times the effect is the same as allowing them to keep hunting the same covey until it is severely reduced in numbers. Guides pay a small yearly license fee to be able to take hunters out and in most cases can pay for the fee they pay with one client outing.
There are numerous guides that work the Patagonia area and each have numerous clients over the season. In a season such as we just had, the coveys cannot take the pressure. This year, due to lack of sufficient precipitation at the right time, the coveys were quite small and some had no ‘young of the year.’
I have always hoped that the hunters would be self-limiting during a poor year and go hunt desert quail instead, or at least limit themselves to a smaller bag. I know some conscientious hunters this year that did not even go after Mearns due to the low numbers. I also know a very few who went deep in the backcountry where there were higher numbers of birds left over from the year before but still limited themselves as to their take. If only a few birds flushed, they didn’t shoot.
Personally, I would like to see shortened hours to be able to hunt Mearns. Shooting should stop by 2pm or 3pm to allow the coveys to get back together. If they are left as singles overnight on our cold winter nights, especially when wet or snowing conditions, the mortality on lone birds goes up.
I just wanted to “give the rest of the story.”
Kurt Bahti, Retired wildlife manager
Sonoita
News junkie falls hard for PRT
I am a retired Minneapolis public schools teacher currently staying at my sister-in-law’s house in Green Valley. Recently, I had the opportunity to visit your fascinating community.
The first thing I do whenever I visit is look for their newspaper. I am a newspaper junkie.
My first cousin, Art Cullen, is the Editor of the Storm Lake, Iowa Times, the smallest newspaper to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Do you know of Art? I think you’d like a documentary of his efforts: https://stormlakemovie.com
One of the highest compliments I can give you is to say that the PRT is a lot like the Storm Lake Times. You play up for your size.
There are so many dynamite things you guys are doing that it would take me a month to mention them all, but I’ll start with the front page. There I devoured great stories about the local dude ranch and Father Simon.
I think you all do a fantastic job on your school coverage. I feel like I know everything I need to know to enroll a young person into school there. “Student Ready Cars for Auction” was excellent, and your sports coverage is superior to anything I’ve read anywhere. I loved the PUHS Senior Spotlights. That section is vital to understanding youth and your community. They are outstanding kids! And if I see one of those kids on the street, instead of being intimidated like youth can sometimes make us feel, I can approach them by name and say, “Hey Tallen, great story about you in the PRT! By the way, did you know your muffler is a little noisy? Can I help you find someone who might fix it?”
The Senior spotlights open so many doors and connect so many disparate elements of the community. Jenny Vasquez’s favorite memory is when Mr. Hayes fell while playing in a basketball game. I left Patagonia knowing Jenny Vasquez and knowing Mr. Hayes and his wife, and loving them—really loving them. They’re all like characters from a Lake Wobegon story. I want to help them succeed.
The new teacher who has joined Elgin School sounds way overqualified—just the person I would like to have working with my children or my neighbors’ children. I could go on and on about how you guys cover education. Know that you are doing the best job anywhere.
Tom Murray
Shoreview, MN
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Errors and Omissions
In Robert Gay’s article in the March PRT, ‘Dreams Are Still Dying Near Patagonia,’ the reporting on PCOME-arranged repatriation of remains was misplaced. It was associated with the Temporal Canyon case, 23-3735, and should have been connected with a Flux Canyon case, 23-0606. The PRT apologizes for this error.