Whatever

Who sewed that????

 

Quit being a sissy

 

We used to have a lot of pheasants and quail around here when I was a kid but no turkeys. Now we have no pheasants, quail are making a comeback and we have turkeys everywhere.

 

Plastic surgeon, he says it will flatten out some.

 

I'm not up on the current limits in PA.
I swore off deer hunting when I made the mistake of shooting a buck way back in a some very rough terrain.
Dragged him out and it about killed me.

Anyway, some years ago, PA went to a very liberal doe tag policy.
Obviously to knock down the numbers. Buck-only ain't gonna do that.
Of course a lot of the old timers complained.

 

There are techniques you can do to the scar to help flatten it out. I had to do them with my shoulder.

 

I should get a caterpillar tattoo!

 

It is what it is.

 

Yeah, how odd.
Many years ago, there were lots of pheasants and quail.
Now there are practically none, except for the occasional stocked pheasant who manages to survive one hunting season.

There are lots of theories as to why that is:

Changes in land use, that is, farmers eliminating hedgerows and uncultivated land. Remaining habitat and refuge areas are fragmented.
No one trapping furbearers like foxes.
No one shoots hawks any more. Yeah, attitudes have changed there.
Just to mention a few...


Turkeys?
Seems like every other morning a couple fly off their roosts up the mountainside right into my back yard.

 

I’ve heard that you will never have pheasants if you have turkey’s. They say a turkey will run them off and destroy their nest. I don’t know how true it is though.

 

That's a new one to me.

 

I was always told that it takes a certain type of soil to retain pheasants...none around here.

 

I remember a Game Commission guy coming to our club telling us that.

The obvious response from the old-timers at the club was:

So how come we had an explosion of pheasants around here after World War Two, all the way to the late 70s?
Sure, lots of young men were in uniform during the war and not hunting.
And brushy areas expanded with less labor on the farms to clear it.
But the soil was good enough then.

 

Ok.

 

We had pheasants for years, I can remember pheasant hunting yearly growing up on the same farm I farm now. But about 30-35 years ago it started to change.

 

We’ve had numerous hunting clubs raise and release pheasants over the years. Once the clubs stop releasing birds they always seem to disappear and never reproduce.

 

Part of the problem is the drop in fur prices. Coons and other critters will eat the eggs and then you have an increase in Bobcats and an increase in coyotes and foxes.

 

I don’t like your stupid truck because I am jealous...

 

I really believe that's part of it.
And hawks.

When I was a kid, family farms were mixed farms.
A bit of everything...chickens, hogs, beef cattle in pasture, dairy cows.
Corn, hay, whatnot.

And in any farm there are rough areas and less fertile areas.
Lots of times those areas were brush or woodlot.
Now, it seems farmers have to cultivate every square foot just to survive.
And it's less mixed farming and more monoculture.

The result is fragmented and diminished habitat.

So if I had to guess, I'd say there are a number of causes.

 

Why is that? That’s a shame