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When there's good news and bad news, a lot of people prefer to hear the bad news first. Like the finale of a suspenseful television drama, the 2010-2011 Texas upland game season is set to end Feb. 27 with a West Texas cliffhanger.

Veteran quail hunters used to be great examples of optimism. They've long know that robust populations of quail follow boom-and-bust cycles that depend on habitat. Wet years, like 2010, have coincided with a rebound in populations.

Here's a medical term best appreciated by anyone who's been sick lately and the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong. The term is "idiopathic" and it means a disease for which no cause is known.

The most important advance in 80-plus years in our understanding of bobwhite quail ecology—or, more to the point, bobwhite quail mortality—has been the discovery that a certain parasitic eyeworm, Oxyspirura petrowi, not only has the...