doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Land Management Practices..... Then and Now

I spent over 15 years running an environmental consulting business in NE Illinois. One of my main income sources was providing environmental site assessments as part of the due diligence required for real estate transactions. Reviewing historical aerial photos was a part of my assessment review. If you want to see scary take a look at aerial photos of your area taken over the last 70 years (in Illinois the Soil Conservation offices had collections dating from 1938 to the present). The ongoing march of urban sprawl is horrific!

Great post, BillD. We are kindred spirits. I have a secret place where I can go, any morning, and hear several coveys greeting the break of day, about a five minute drive from my house. They are nothing like they used to be, but I have nothing but admiration for the ones that are left. They are true survivors.

SRH

The British Wildlife Trust, formerly known as the Game Conservancy detail how in Sussex England grey partridge are near extinction, save for one farm where they practice simple conservation measures, and their partridge increased by 1600 per cent.

These practices include beetle banks, conservation headlands, cover crops, nesting cover, winter feed. There is one more that is not mentioned but must contribute- the farm makes money from shooting days on these wild birds, money that offsets the production loss from the conservation steps taken. If hunting were to contribute cash directly into farmers' pockets things would most likely change. Sounds cynical, but it probably counts.

Yes, the CRP has diminished in Iowa, but in areas where CRP still exists, or in areas where it was never dominant, we are not seeing pheasants in quantities anywhere near the 1980s or early 90s. A lot of good cover has been lost in corn fields with the Roundup Ready type farming. There used to be many more weeds in the corn rows, all good for pheasants. Pheasants do feed on bugs and the modern insecticides are pretty potent, thus less available food for the pheasant. In southwest and southeast Iowa I have recently hunted in areas that "looked really good" but held little game. So little, that I do not plan to go back anytime soon , after many decades of successful hunting in these areas.

Daryl's history of Iowa pheasant hunting matches my experience in the Texas Panhandle. We still have pheasant but not like we used to. Changes I have noticed since the heyday:

Circular sprinklers
Less cover
Less irrigated land (aquifer depletion)
Fewer farmers
Fewer weeds

Cannot make a cause and effect argument for any of those differences.

Thanks Stan,
This one's for you.



Six coveys before noon. Didn't hunt the singles. The 1100 belonged to a friend who hunted that day with me. I was shooting a old 870 20ga 28" modified no rib. Being younger I thought that "fancy" 1100 would look better.

Adam, your top photos really hit home - literally. They could have been any number of valleys here in western Massachusetts (the Pioneer Valley, the Mohawk Valley, etc),

First pic is how I remember much of the "country" landscape (10 miles from home) in the early - late sixties. The one on the right is NOW.

It's really disheartening. There are success stories - wild turkey numbers are so high they are practically nuisances, and the deer population is good. But a contributor to the success in many cases is the loss of wild habitat to humans. As our urban and now suburban neighborhoods become more and more wastelands filled with third generation welfare brats(regardless of race, so don't slap that on me) people want to live further out in "the country" (10 - 20 miles from my same hometown.)

Loss of natural habitat means bad news for a lot of animals. It's not uncommon for black bear, moose, deer and turkey to be encountered on woods walks where such would be unthinkable. When I walk my Brit in the off season in woods 5 miles or so from where I live I always carry a handgun in case of coyotes. Even the mutation "coydogs" have been spotted by some.

Things ain't what they used to be, and stubborn old me still clings to how it used to be. Sentimental or stupid. As much as I don't want to I feel my wife and I will have to move WAY out in the next decade.