Take a look around the Sawbriar, and it doesn’t take long to see something different that you don’t find at a lot of wingshooting preserves: Warm season grasses, and nothing but. Once you’ve stepped off the lawn of the Sawbriar’s hunting lodge, in fact, there isn’t a blade of fescue to be found.

The Sawbriar is a hunting business; its goal is to attract hunters looking to hunt quail. Co-owner Rhonda Wright is quick to point out that the 400-acre property wouldn’t sustain a population of birds large enough to meet their business needs without periodical releases of additional birds.

But the Sawbriar’s habitat management practices is a story within the story: And it’s a story of success.

Across the northern Cumberland Plateau, all of Tennessee and the rest of the Southeast today, there’s something missing when you step outside and take a good listen. The tell-tale bob-white call of the bobwhite quail.

It’s no secret that the future of the bobwhite quail is in jeopardy. The bird is at the top of the National Audubon Society’s list of the 20 Common Birds in Decline, and has disappeared from its original range at a rate of 70%. Quail Forever, an organization devoted to restoring quail to their original habitat, has predicted that quail will disappear from some areas in the Southeast by as quickly as 2010.

The reasons for the quail’s decline are multiple, and include urban encroachment and improved farming practices. But most of the reasons center around one main factor: Loss of habitat.

Over the years, native, warm-season grasses were replaced in many pastures by non-native, cool-season grasses, best known of which is fescue. The farming-friendly cool-season grasses are more tightly-woven than warm-season grasses, which tend to grow in clumps and stand taller than the cool-season grasses. For quail, that spells a problem.

“Fescue is the farmer’s best friend,” Wright said. “If I weren’t in this business I’d probably say Kentucky 31 all the way. But it does hinder quail so much. They can’t maneuver through the tight weave of the fescue, which is what you want for your lawn.”

By having to stay on top of the grass, quail become susceptible to predactors, like hawks, foxes and coyotes . . . all of which have flourished even as habitat for quail has diminished.

And, once those warm-season grasses have matured, they produce seeds that are a primary food source for quail.

“Take ragweed for example,” says Wright. “Everybody hates to see ragweed. Except quail, and they love it.”

Grasses planted on the Sawbriar include winter wheat, clover, big bluestem, little bluestem, Indian grass, switchgrass, foxtail millet and oats. Many are the same varieties that are recommended to landowners by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, which has been promoting the re-establishment of praries through the planting of native grasses since the late 1980s. TWRA biologists say that warm-season grasses benefit not only quail, but deer, turkey and rabbits, as well as non-game wildlife species, migratory birds and butterflies.

“The native grasslands and early successional fields they have restored are on par with any WMA in the region and now have the potential to not only support good populations of quail and rabbits, but also numerous small mammals and resident and migrant songbirds,” says Tennessee Tech habitat management instructor Tom Roberts.

While much of the Sawbriar has been planted, Wright pointed out that many of the grasses also came back without assistance in log roads made by timber cutters on the property several years before the Sawbriar was founded.

“A lot of grasses came back natural,” she said. “They’re in the soil. Given the right conditions, they will come back.”

Broomsedge, little blue stem and big blue stem grows in the old road beds throughout the Sawbriar today.

“We didn’t plant that,” Wright said. “That was just already there.”

While her business is the Sawbriar, Wright said that there is “absolutely” a conservation lesson that can be taken from the efforts there for private landowners wishing to make their properties more conducive to fledging quail populations and other small game.

“It’s a lot of work, but it can be done if you want to do it bad enough,” she said.

[Sawbriar at Big South Fork offers half-day and full-day guided hunts for pheasant and quail. More information is available at their website, www.sawbriarhunting.com.]