Keith: "Much of my area has actually seen the human population decline or remain stable for the last 50 years, so habitat loss is not the factor that it is in other areas."

ND is definitely one of those areas. Our farm population peaked in the 1920's and has been declining ever since. As the least forested state in the Union our habitat, native prairie, is all but gone except for some high rocky moraines and arid areas west of the Missouri River with shallow soils. Land use is far more intensive as the small diversified (livestock and grain) farms disappeared. Interesting that after the homesteaders arrived, prairie chickens flourished to the point they were a staple winter food item for many farm families, having largely displaced sharp-tailed grouse that were actually semi-migratory during tough winters. Now the chickens are gone and all we have left in eastern ND are barely huntable numbers of sharptails. They, along with introduced upland game birds, increased a bit with the habitat created by the CRP program. But they faced the same suite of skunk/raccoon/red fox egg, and to a lesser extent hen predators that was already well established. Coyotes were uncommon. Further west, where coyotes were more numerous, pheasants in particular thrived. So there is a balance between habitat, predators and prey that is the key to general game abundance. That is not to say that gamebird populations cannot be increased greatly on small areas with intensive predator control.