Like the quail populations they raise money to preserve and protect, Park Cities Quail Coalition is small, but mighty. The group began in 2006 when founder Joe Crafton moved from Tennessee to Dallas, anxious to continue his quail hunting and conservation hobbies with a group of friends. “Back then, Quail Unlimited was a big national organization, kind of like Ducks Unlimited,” says Park Cities Quail Coalition Executive Director Jay Stine, “They met and decided they wanted to form a Dallas chapter, and they called it Park Cities Quail Unlimited.”
The new organization launched its first spring fundraising dinner a year later, featuring live and silent auctions at the Dallas Country Club. Funds went toward research and grants to benefit the quail population in Texas. “They raised $85,000 that night and grew from there,” says Stine. The second year, the event raised around $734,000 and presented a lifetime sportsman award to oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, an avid quail hunter and population advocate. “We like to say it is the Heisman Trophy of quail hunting and conservation,” says Stine.
The group named the award after Pickens and has since presented it to annual recipients including Johnny Morris, the owner of Bass Pro Shops, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Dallas Cowboys president, owner, and general manager Jerry Jones, entertainer Kevin Costner, country music star George Strait and more.
Stine, who took the organization’s helm around 2011, says leadership could see the organization’s potential impact, and they wanted to make sure it went toward Texas. “The Quail Unlimited model was that you had to send the money you raised back to South Carolina to be used on their programs, and we weren't real fond of that,” Stine explains. The group negotiated a deal with Quail Unlimited that capped the amount donated to the parent organization. “The next year, we raised over $1 million, and they reneged on their deal,” Stine says. The Park Cities group decided to sever its ties to Quail Unlimited, forming Park Cities Quail Coalition.
Now, Park Cities Quail Coalition has spawned 11 other chapters across Texas, collectively operating as Quail Coalition. The 12 chapters encompass 3,500 members, roughly half of which are in Dallas. Oklahoma City has become its most recent addition, the first outside of Texas. “We’ve been wanting to do Oklahoma for a while,” Stine says. And he hopes the growth will continue. “We’ve had some people reach out to us from Alabama, Florida, and Georgia.”
The parent organization has also raised more than $30 million, now roughly $3 million per year, toward quail research and preservation since 2009. “Quail used to be all over Mississippi, and Alabama, and Louisiana, and East Texas, and now they're hardly any. It's just a big concern of ours to try to reverse that,” Stine says of Park Cities Quail Coalition’s efforts to support Texas’ four quail species populations. Most recently, the group has been working to restore the quail populations in southeast Texas on a 6,000 acre property. “For three years in a row, they've brought 120 quail in from Florida and translocated them to East Texas,” Stine says.
It also recently released a medicated quail feed aimed at preventing parasitic eye worms in quail populations. “For the last 10 years, we've been working hard to get a medicated feed approved for quail that you can put out in your feeders on your ranch, and quail eat it, and basically, it deworms the quail like you would deworm your dogs, or cats, or cattle,” Stine says.
Park Cities Quail Coalition worked with Dr. Ron Kendall at Texas Tech University’s Institute of Environmental and Human Health to create the feed—the first medicated feed created specifically for wild quail. “We've done that and gotten approved by the FDA, and it hit the market last year,” Stine says proudly. “Now, we're doing a three-year study, because we want to prove that it can help quail population.”
Moving forward, Park Cities Quail Coalition hopes to continue growing into new chapters, wherever there is interest. It also hopes to continue to help kids enjoy the outdoors: It supports the Outdoors Tomorrow Foundation, which teaches kids hunter safety, and Texas Brigades, which offers summer camps centered around bobwhite quail, bass fishing, deer, cattle, etc. “We want to have our kids and grandkids quail hunting 34 years from now—just to kind of keep that legacy alive, “Stine says. Finally, Park Cities Quail Coalition hopes to continue to grow the attendance at its annual fundraising dinner, held in March at Southern Methodist University. “Almost all the money we raise at the local level goes directly to our mission,” Stine says. “We want to keep that authenticity and frugalness and expand it.”
We hope to continue to grow the attendance at its annual fundraising dinner, held in March at Southern Methodist University.
Park Cities Quail Coalition has spawned 11 other chapters across Texas, collectively operating as Quail Coalition. The 12 chapters encompass 3,500 members, roughly half of which are in Dallas.