Whatever

Yes my dad, brother and I trapped for several years. We mainly trapped muskrat, beaver and coons. Hell we would run 200 traps twice a day! You would have a hard time finding a kid now that wanted to do that. We walked every bit of it too. About lost my dad one night when he fell through the ice with a pair of chestwaders on and they filled up. I was about 100 yards away and couldn’t see his light but I heard the ice crack and him yell. Scared the shit out of me!

 

Yeah, my club did that too and finally gave up.

My Dad never taught me.
But he said he trapped muskrats and coons and foxes, with the occasional mink and skunk.
This was in the 30s.
He bought a used Indian motorcycle with some of the proceeds.

 

As I said in an earlier post, I was always told that it takes a certain type of soil to maintain pheasants. So when the hunting clubs diminished and stopped releasing the birds they either moved out of the area or were killed off but never reproduced.

 

Yes dad never taught me to hunt he had stopped by then, but he loved to trap.

 

Apparently it has to do with grain crops... and calcium in the soil along with temperature. I was just reading a 240 page dissertation on the topic. Lack of glacial activity also.

 

I trapped some back in the early 80’s and made some decent extra money. Very few guys trapping or coyote hunting around here nowadays.

 

Must be the lack of calcium because we have a shit ton of grain crops around here. There are lots of pheasant in eastern Illinois and just to the north of us in Iowa.

 

I know of one guy in his 20’s that ran a few traps last year. First guy I’ve seen in a long time. I don’t think I could do it anymore.

 

Southern Iowa was the location of this paper and anything in the southern areas have been tried and tried but they just keep fizzling out

 

I’ve heard that south of I70 in Kansas City there are some.

 

If you are talking HE Volvo are better heavy equipment

 

Here is the begining
Influence of Calcium and Temperature on Pheasant Distribution
Since its introduction in the early 1900's in many sections of the
United States and Canada, the ring-necked pheasant has become firmly
established only in the northern and central portions of that general
area commonly known as the "farm belt," in isolated pockets in western
and northwestern United States, and in southcentral and southwest Canada
(Aldrich and Duvall 1955). Within this general region, however, and
immediately north of it are found extensive areas in which pheasants are
scarce or absent because of lack of suitable habitat. The success of the
pheasant on the North American continent apparently depends largely upon
the presence of cultivated grain crops, so that it is not difficult to
understand why it has not become established in non-agricultural areas.
However, at the southern edge of the presently occupied range pheasant
populations decline abruptly, and even though this area appears super-
ficially to resemble closely that immediately to the north, repeated
attempts to establish pheasants farther south in the United States have
failed. The reason for this failure is not well understood, but to
account for it two major hypotheses have been proposed; the glaciation
or calcium hypothesis and the temperature hypothesis.
Leopold (1931) was the first to attempt an explanation for this
phenomenon. He observed that in the Midwest pheasants appeared limited
to glaciated areas, the highest populations occurring in areas of the
most recent (Wisconsin) glaciation. Furthermore, established populations
found south of recently glaciated regions appeared to be restricted to
river systems flowing south out of glaciated areas. His interpretation
was that glaciation effected the success of populations by providing
fresh glacial deposits that contained "lime or grit of a quantity or
quality necessary to the welfare of these birds." In addition, he
proposed a nutritional hypothesis which he felt explained the failure of
populations, which after appearing established progressively declined and
eventually disappeared. The absence or deficiency of a mineral or vitamin,
he believed, would not necessarily be detrimental to first-generation
transplants because of the nutrient reserve they carried, but if the diet
in the new release area was deficient in any particular mineral the
reserve would be partially utilized. That remaining, however, would be
passed on to the next generation and ultimately, because each passing
generation retained less reserve, the population would undergo a marked
decline in vigor and reproductive capacity. Dalke (1938) appeared to
provide support for this hypothesis when he found that in Michigan the
amount of calcareous grit contained in the gizzards of pheasants was
greatest during the breeding season, and suggested that this was in some
way associated with egg production. McCann (1939) discovered that penned
bobwhite quail and pheasants preferred glacial gravel when provided with
a choice of three types, and that individuals of both species lost vigor
(]•
or died if deprived of a source of calcium. Thus, he concluded that game
birds such as pheasants which depend largely on cultivated grains are
probably dependent on calcareous grit for part of their calcium require-
ments, the abundance of such grit possibly determining their geographic
distribution. Evidence appearing to support this interpretation was
provided by Moore (1955), xAo reported that pheasant distribution in Ohio
closely parallels the southern boundary of the Wisconsin glaciation.
Apparently, Kubota and Swanson (1958) noted a similar relationship between
pheasant abundance and high-calcium glacial areas in New York State.
The first experimental investigations designed to determine the
effect of calcium deficiency on the reproductive capacity of pheasants
were those of Dale (1954). Diets believed comparable to those of wild
pheasants when fed to penned birds were found inadequate for reproduction
unless a calcium supplement was added. Birds deprived of the supplement
did not produce a normal quota of eggs and, furthermore, hatchability of
these eggs was poor. A 0.5 per cent calcium content in the diet was
found minimal for adequate egg production; thus, on this basis he estimated
that approximately 250 milligrams of calcium per bird per day needed to
be consumed to meet this requirement. Such a requirement, he believed,
could not be met by wild pheasants unless they included in the diet
calcareous grit or some other satisfactory supplement. In western
sections of the United States where calcium content of the soil is much
greater, he suggested that calcareous grit would not be needed since it
seemed probable that birds could meet their calcium requirements by direct
ingestion of the soil or through the increased calcium content of the
grain itself. Further investigations by Dale concerning the effects of
calcium on reproduction were prompted by his observation that a lime-
stone-rich area in Pennsylvania supported a higher pheasant population
than an immediately adjacent but non-calcareous area (Dale 1955).

 

My dad trapped when I was a kid. I remember not being able to sleep, wondering what we were gonna catch.
Side note: one morning we were running his traps and came across this car that was still running. It was super cold out, elderly couple had left their car running, while they were still in it. With the windows up. 'Nuff said.

 

Plenty of calcium here...plenty of limestone.
Also lots of grain crops: wheat, barley, corn and oats.

To my way of thinking, that hypothesis is unproven.
One can more easily explain it as a result of the pressures of predators and habitat fragmentation.
The two go together.

Pheasants are a Eurasian bird.
They have never done well below the 40th parallel.
That much is plain.

 

Thanks everyone. A truck is just a tool to me. It's nothing like what I would have bought, but it's what it took to get my wife on board with getting a TT and hitting the road before we're too damn old.

 

WTF Jay! I was just about to say the exact same thing

 

I'm envious.
My wife is not on board, no how.

So if I'm going solo, I might as well do it my way, light.
Just the truck (with sleeping platform), and tent.

 

Hmm...I don't dismiss this entirely.
Having raised chickens myself, I know the necessity of a calcium supplement.
We used ground up oyster shells. They'd peck it to fill their gizzards.

But I'm thinking there's more than one factor in play.

 

If the TT were not a factor, what would you consider?
I like to ask questions.

 

I like oysters... yeah yeah...

I know. Im supposed to be asleep... sue me..