Those pictures remind me exactly of the huge farm we used to drive to from Eastern Ky to hunt turkey. This was during the 1980's and the farm was in Kirksville MO It was a hunting dream. They had maybe the highest turkey density in the country, I saw pictures of winter flocks of pheasant that numbered 100 or more in the fallow fields, huge covies of bobwhites would blow up around you when moving between stands and I had a huge 12 or 14 point whitetail jump over my head crossing a creek at dawn when I was using a creek bank as a bunker for calling.
The state had a huge impact here. KY always had a lot of river otters, and trading them led directly to the turkey flocks we now have and to many of the elk herds which have been firmly re-established in the state, to the point that their growth has to be pretty much capped. The turkey are so plentiful that we now see 4 or 5 a morning around our house.
I feel good about the fact that turkey are now everywhere, deer are almost a nuisance, elk have taken over their original range here and we now even have huntable numbers of black bear. Geese still migrate on the Mississippi and doves are in all the cornfields. The negative thing of course is that quail are essentially not huntable (at least I wish they would be protected and grouse are way down). These two really common birds when I was young provided 90% of my outdoor activity. My two grandkids may never have an opportunity. I am bothered by the fact that they can accomplish all these rejuvenations on large ecosystem animals, but our culture and farming practices have changed so much that birds that were common as dirt and require relatively little area to live cannot find areas of only a few acres where they can survive.
|