Bobwhite quail are one of America's favorite game birds. Healthy coveys of bobwhites indicate healthy land, and because quail hunting can bring in valuable income, landowners and game managers value these birds and encourage them wherever the habitat is suitable. Although biologists have studied bobwhites since the 1920s and have amassed an awesome base of information about this species, their knowledge has not been made widely available to landowners, hunters, and other lay readers. The questions that arise during periods of reflection after a hunt or in discussions around a campfire already have answers, but these, too often, are all buried in the scientific literature. Fred S. Guthery, one of the leading experts on bobwhite quail in the Southwest and southern Midwest, provides a wealth of useful and interesting information in this very readable, well-organized single volume. He offers new experiences and perspectives, based on the latest research, along with a review of his well-known writings and insights from the past fifteen years of observation. Guthery has concentrated most of his work on the Southwest, but this book provides information about all the areas that bobwhite inhabit and also includes information on the related species, Gambel's quail. Because the biology of quail and the principles of their management are very general, the information presented in this book will have application everywhere bobwhites are known. Wildlife managers, landowners, hunters, and anyone else interested in ensuring that quail thrive on their property will find this an accessible and valuable contribution by a leader in the field. FRED S. GUTHERY is professor and holder of the Bollenbach Chair in the Department of Forestry, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater.

In wildlife, fisheries, forestry, and range management departments around the country, natural resource scientists and their students advance understanding of the natural world largely through the collection and analysis of data. These students learn how to acquire data in the field and analyze them using modeling and other statistical methods.What they do not learn, contends author Fred S. Guthery, is what science means as an intellectual pursuit and where natural resource science fits in the scientific tradition. He argues that without education about the nature and philosophy of science, the wildlife field has become enamored with its methodologies at the expense of gaining real knowledge, leading to what some have characterized as ""a crisis in how wildlife science is pursued."" With ""A Primer on Natural Resource Science"", Guthery intends to put learning about the nature of science into the natural resource scientist's university curriculum.In the first part of the book, ""Perspectives,"" Guthery describes the principles of the scientific endeavor, discussing the nature of reasoning, of facts, of creativity and critical thinking. In the second part, ""Practice,"" he presents the ""mechanics"" of science, explaining the roles of experiment, observation, models, and statistics. He also demystifies the essential activity of publishing, telling students and researchers why they must do it and how to do it successfully.Throughout the book, Guthery uses his long experience and the body of his own research to relate the philosophical underpinnings of science to the realities of field biology. By providing real-life examples in the practice of natural resource science, Guthery offers practical, occasionally painful, and sometimes humorous lessons on the human urge to know about nature through science.