doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Visions of sugarplums danced in their heads...

Sorry to drift further off topic, but I was recently reading some short story accounts of hunting in India in the 1800's. It seems some of the hunters of the day didn't hesitate to use human corpses for tiger bait. It's a different time now, but I don't think there's anything wrong with finding the history absolutely fascinating. It's similar in ways to the historical buffalo and fur trade. Besides, the rifles used have very familiar sounding maker names and the business no doubt helped keep gunmakers viable.

In the CA regs for upland game, the rule is that you can hunt over anything that is "the result of normal agricultural operations." So, once a field has been harvested, the seeds or melons left on the ground are completely legit for hunting grounds. Per the regs, one can't just knock down a crop and leave it for bait, but there are other reasons for knocking down crops and leaving them on the ground. About 15 or 20 years ago the owner of the best wild pheasant fields in the Imperial Valley got so upset about asparagus prices that he disked all his fields and just left the asparagus there. Pheasants were running around everywhere, but not for long.

Unless it has been changed recentlly that "Normal Agricultural Practice" was the way TN law read. Some years back a good many farmers around here were Drilling their wheat fields twice, once normally & then they would go around again with the drill set not to cover the seed. They were charging dove shooters to shoot over their fields. Many were caught, charged & fined, but the farmers weren't charged, they weren't shooting. The shooters of course were not given the opportunity to examine the field before they paid their fee to shoot. I don't know how this was eventually settled but haven't heard much about it lately. I think though that most shooter just got to the point they refused to pay to shoot over a field which had been planted in winter wheat, thus ending the unscrupulous profits.

Regulations vary by state. In the two state plant fields and I hunt, I can not harvest a single grain and bring it back into the field later and spread it. I can decide to bush hog wheat if I am just not going to harvest it. Doing this is legal, where if I harvest the wheat and spread it back into the field later I am guilty of baiting.

Where it can get tricky is normal farming operations. I have seen wheat broadcast on the surface which I consider to be baiting. Wheat I plant is drilled into the land not broadcast on the surface like nuts on a ice cream. But years ago I know a few farmer did broadcast wheat, rye or clover seed on the surface of new disked ground in small areas. That was legitimate farming practice then but I would not try it now.

Best field I ever saw for dove was ten acre of lightly disked cantaloupes. There were several thousand dove there opening day. Everyone was done in a few minutes. Dove were like flies on the ground. You could not look in any direction and not see several dozen to maybe fifty birds entering or leaving the field all day long.

Broadcasting wheat on the surface really is a "normal agricultural practice" in my area. It is done and subsequently disced in lightly to cover it, so that one can have a green cover crop in the fields in winter and early spring. In the spring it is killed with glysophate, then planted into, no-till.

The catch, is how quickly do you get back to the field to disc it after broadcasting the wheat. This practice was deemed not to be a normal agricultural practice in GA at least 30 years ago, as far as shooting doves over it goes.

As far as leaving wheat to head out, then mowing it down, this is a normal ag practice. Often a field will not be planted by the owner for a year or two, perhaps because it is marginal land and current prices are low. A wheat cover crop is planted, then left all year as cover.

I'm blessed to live in an area that has lots of peanuts. My son and I will grow about 450 acres this year. Leftovers behind a peanut combine often makes for sporty shooting.

SRH

Doesn't USFWS have jurisdiction over Mourning doves?
They pinch farmers around here every year for excess waste grain. Especially when the mallards are coming down from Canada.

I want to read that. I hope that Stephen Bodio is able to finish his book on the Passenger Pigeon...Geo

Stan, there's a "catch" in what Georgia requirements are to meet "normal agricultural practices". Certain methods of planting certain crops are permitted within specific dates. Some crop planting techniques are not permitted to be shot over after plantings outside "normal agricultural practices" and you are probably familiar with that more than most.
George, I heard an interview on the radio about a passenger pigeon book and I can't recall the name of the author. Among the many causes of extinction according to the author were the railroads and telegraphs which would transport the market hunters to the dense migrations. The telegraph would alert the hunters where to go. The barrels of birds were then railroaded to the market centers. The birds may be gone, but the places named after the pigeons still exist here in Georgia and throughout the southeast. Gil

I found the Greenberg book on Amazon and ordered it along with another called "A Message From Martha". Martha was the last of the species which died at the Cincinnati zoo...Geo

I have a suspicion it wasn't market hunting, but the total loss of the American Chestnut forests due to blight. Gil, you saw some clear-cutting I've done up at the farm. I'm planning to replant some of it in Dunstan Hybrid Chestnuts. That's the closest thing we've got to the true American Chestnut. Maybe we'll live long enough to roast some chestnuts at Christmas!

Might as well start with the first, Geo.
"The Passenger Pigeon", by William Bates Mershon. Free to read online.

My father new him. Founding member of TU. Gunned right down the road from my house.

It wasn't sportsmen that ended PP's. It was the cutting of all of their habitat. Also, the second point I might add, is one of perspective.

We would like to think we do, but we have limited ability to conceptualize things bigger than ourselves. God, the Universe, and the number of PP's required to keep their population humming along. They probably needed millions to survive as a species, but millions of passenger pigeons necessary as a minimum was hard to comprehend. There looked to be plenty around. Such was the biology of the PP.

Fragile, fecund, and needing specific OLD GROWTH habitat. I can't imagine the volume of mast they needed to consume. The Chestnut blight guaranteed their end. The 400% Eastern US population growth, from 1860 to 1900, requiring furniture and packaging to create households, accelerated the cutting.

Lots of historical perspective on PP's out there.

Sometimes it reminds me of how a stone chip breaks a windshield when you turn the defrosters on. Unexpected destruction.