Many of the old time grouse hunters who wrote--right down to George Bird Evans--had a very negative opinion of goshawks. Growing up a pheasant hunter, my major concern was much more in the direction of the nest predators (raccoons being the worst because there are so many of them, followed by skunks and opossums) which pose the most significant threat to ground-nesting birds in farm country. They'll destroy nests, wiping out an entire clutch. A hen pheasant will renest, but each successive clutch is smaller.
If we'd had the same kind of trapping pressure on coons after CRP started as we did before--and it had declined significantly because fur prices had dropped and because there were not as many farm families with boys who ran trap lines for spending money--I can't imagine what that would have done to pheasant and quail numbers. They increased significantly under CRP, but would have increased even more if trappers had been as active as they were previously. And fewer predators would be even more welcome today, with the decline in CRP acres and in pheasant populations.
