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

Most people have a window to look through of about 60 years. Some things happen over a wider span. You just never know when you are making changes how they'll play out long term.

Needed those old trees, and needed huge hatches to combat mortality. 1-1=0

There was a great story in Atlantic about 25 years ago called "The Greening of America." All the countrysides were practically bare of trees near habitation as far as the eye could see here in the eastern end of Nova Scotia where Scots tended to their sheep. It's forested now. The province's two pulp and paper mills, one the biggest and fastest of its kind in the world, are in this region. No one is complaining of lack of wildlife.

Ithaca,

It all depends if you accept humans as part of nature or not. Too often these days nature is portrayed as human-free, and a qualitative premium placed on the development of nature that happens in the absence of people. This attitude has led to the forceful removal of indigenous people from some African "parks" so that nature could re-establish itself.

The counter argument is that people's needs lead to more rather than less biodiversity. In Europe there is great lament at the loss of the human dependent biodiversity as farms are abandoned, especially in eastern Europe.

In hunting terms this is evident in the demise of chukars where marginal arable land is no longer planted with cereals, or where small fields had their natural hedges removed to favor efficiency in the use of machinery and grey partridge cover was lost.

There is also the lunatic fringe who favor anything that negatively impacts hunting, and actively promote the protection of all predators, no matter how high the numbers.

Mono culture in any environment is a mistake. Look at cities which planted only one species of trees on their streets. A blight enters the non diverse area and wipes out all the trees in short order. Do you not think that the same can and will happen to wildlife. We had a major die off of white tailed deer last winter. 100% die off in a small area. Biologist think it burned out because it was so rapid. Had it taken a few weeks to kill instead of days the devastation would have been much greater in scale. think about 90+% die off in an area that covers several states. Major risk of this modern mono culture and short sited game management.

The cry to let nature take its course has a certain simple minded appeal. Virgin forest were not the same from end to end and the Native Americans burned areas to increase regrowth and edge cover. Problem is that no managed system will ever turn back the clocks as many key species are gone forever. Ever see a American Chestnut tree that was mature. Been gone for a hundred years and not coming back. Heavy handed manipulation will only go off in a series of wrong directions with little long term improvement for game or even man.

Someone mentioned the land management practices above and the resultant diminishing of the bird food supply. Birds eat bugs, too. In Iowa, which used to be a wonderful pheasant state, I believe the herbicides/insecticides have spoiled that pheasant population. A year or so I talked to a farmer of many decades and he said he had not seen a grasshopper in 3 years.

Delta Waterfowl has done some very interesting research on the effects of predation and most especially predator control on duck populations in the Prairie Pothole region, one of the most significant breeding grounds for waterfowl in all of North America.

Suffice it to say that it appears to be perhaps the single most important factor regarding population levels. Ducks are pretty adaptable to different habitats if they are alive. But when killed by predators, they don't have much chance to adapt to any type of habitat.

Perhaps we should point out that all predators are right wing, conservative, homophobic, baby killer animals. Perhaps that will make them such a hated group that a bounty on them will be funded by the government.

I concluded that without predator control, which was strictly illegal, my efforts to keep viable wild quail number were hopeless. Worse than that, I think that my efforts just concentrated prey numbers into a smaller area which made the predators job easier. While I can not prove with hard numbers the number of predators seen did go down after my efforts stopped. Nature returns a balance when man gets out of the way.

In the end it takes about thirty things to get birds to increase in numbers and one or two to wipe them out. Miss a single thing or fail to anticipate a single negative and the best laid plans are doomed. It is far more complex than cover, food plots and predator control.

The best quail numbers we every had on the farm was when we grew tomatoes for canning. Small fields with light weed cover on the edges, with grain strips for trucks to move down the field, with plenty of cover from the vines and open space for early predator detection gave quail super conditions for rearing young. Back then predators were victims when seen by an armed farmer. We would go from four to six coveys on the farm to more than a dozen. Big strong birds with all the strong flight abilities we love in wild birds. Canning is long gone and the crops do not favor quail because the farming has become so much a big business that it has to be run efficiently or you are done in a few bad years.

Be interested in hearing how Guy de la Valdene's quail habitat is doing after he wrote For a Handful of Feathers.

Iowa has lost so much cover, CRP and fencerows,etc, that there is practically no place for a pheasant to safely nest and rear her young or to hide and escape predators and old man winter. Back in 1980s I used to pheasant hunt Iowa every year and did very well. I believe that Iowa has lost more CRP acreage than any other state.
In addition to the loss of so much of the CRP the fields became much larger, fence rows were removed and a total monoculture installed so that larger equipment could be used to make more money. The ethanol craziness has only turbo charged these changes, with CRP rates being so low is simply is not economical for a farmer to put land into CRP.
Then Mr Rooster just faded away.....

I've been following this thread since it started. There are so many good points being made, each is a piece of the total problem. I won't rehash what has already been said. The 3 things I find the most sad are simple. !- having my brace of a pointer and setter working out in front of me knowing that next covey is somewhere close. 2- Getting up with the sun on a cool morning and taking that hot mug of coffee outside to hear the birds as they come of the roost. 3- Listening to the current generation talk about shooting all the birds that were released that morning for their hunt. All the while wishing I could explain how we loved our wild birds and never over killed a covey. Just wishing I could explain why it's more about the dogs and the hunt.
I sure hope my old English Setter has found some good cover for us to hunt when I join her again. Maybe it's all a product of how fast the world moves these days. Maybe it's just we've lost the ability to relax and move at a slower pace. I don't know, but I still remember the old ways.
Good Hunting and should you get the chance to hear the birds wake up, please stop and listen for me.