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KyBrad16ga
PostPosted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 5:42 pm  Reply with quote
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Location: Jackson, Mississippi

revdocdrew wrote:

Big conflicts in S. Dakota between the landowners and the 'road hunters' too. Experienced what RD was talking about myself. For 5 yrs, 4 of us were part of a lease just S. of Eudora in Douglas Co.-not exactly rural KS! It was family land owned by two brothers who grew up in Lawrence but had been bankers/oil men in Great Bend. Had it in CRP with food plots mostly for deer but happy to let us hunt quail. 4 pieces, 40-160 acreas and all had birds. We never took more than 2 birds out of a covey at a time and let one piece of property rest for 2 wks before hitting it again and the first two yrs were great!

Unfortunately, the 3rd yr we let in a new guy who, contrary to our agreement and unknown to the other guys just pounded the properties until all the birds were gone and NEVER CAME BACK-could have killed him when the property owner told me that the guy's vehicle was there almost every morning! I am aware of, but did not personally witness, several groups of 'city hunters' doubling their limit by cleaning the birds from the morning and going back out and limiting again. Have heard a guy brag about killing so many quail in the Flint Hills that they had to leave some of them out in the field. And most of the guys are self-absorbed jerks with money and with license plates with JO and SG (you know what I mean) Coyotes and bobcats are an increasing problem but it's the 'skunks' with a license that are really hurting hunting in KS.
There are some wonderful people in KS but so many are now un-connected to the land that they seem to have forgotten what a privilege hunting is and our duty to honor and protect the game we harvest.
Sorry for the rant once again.


Ah, that sucks Rev. I always thought that conservation and being a steward of the land was just as big a part of hunting as the shooting. I was amazed myself when I was out in KS earlier this year at how much habitat there was in the Walk In Hunting and CRP lands, but no quail. Lots of Pheasant, but not a quail to be seen the whole 3 days we were out there in the Beloit and Lake Waconda area.

Is it really due to over hunting? I know that here in Kentucky, most of our quail problems are due to habitat loss. I for one am working on getting some habitat programs going on the family farm and hopefully we can get quail back on our farm.

Cheers,

Brad
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revdocdrew
PostPosted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 7:22 pm  Reply with quote
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KyBrad: as usual I'm not an expert (on very many things!) but have followed the loss of quail and KS and MO pretty closely the last 20 yrs. Obviously habitat loss + fescue is huge. The fescue pastures are nutritional wastelands for quail and the chicks can't run in the turf.
Something no one seemed to understand happened in SE KS, which used to be primo quail country, and the numbers dropped dramatically in the 80's and have not rebounded. May have started with a long drought.
The MO Conservation folks claim it is not from the wild turkeys eating chicks in the spring (and they're probably correct) BUT wherever the deer and wild turkey populations have exploded the quail have gone way down.
Some pockets of healthy populations stretching from N. Central Mo west to N. Central KS and in the KS Flint Hills and way out in SW KS in the Cimmaron Grasslands but very discouraging overall.
Wherever some birds are found, I really believe they just get pounded. A nurse I worked with told me a few years ago that her brothers hunted family land around Hiawatha and Sebetha (NE KS) and killed 48 quail opening weekend and NEVER SAW ANOTHER BIRD THE REST OF THE SEASON-WELL SUPRISE!! I KNOW that many guys out chase down every single from every covey they find 'because it's the only day I'm going to get out this season' or 'I haven't seen any birds all season.'
Alot of the problem is unethical 'hunters' and I'm afraid it's really not just a few 'bad apples' One of the groups that double shot their limits around Garden City was a baptist preacher from Topeka and a couple of his church members-wouldn't Jesus be proud of those hypocrites!
I'm sorry this is so negative but I really am heartsick about what's happening to hunting in the midwest. We can all join QU and PF but not enough of us are landowners to make a difference. We can also petition
congress to continue the CRP program and our states to adequately fund the conservation departments (which do indeed need the $'s of out-of-state hunters). I'm afraid however, that not even shame will change the 'slob hunters' that are killing our sport and our image.
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John Molnar
PostPosted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 8:27 pm  Reply with quote



Joined: 18 Feb 2006
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revdocdrew wrote:
KyBrad: as usual I'm not an expert (on very many things!) but have followed the loss of quail and KS and MO pretty closely the last 20 yrs. Obviously habitat loss + fescue is huge. The fescue pastures are nutritional wastelands for quail and the chicks can't run in the turf.
Something no one seemed to understand happened in SE KS, which used to be primo quail country, and the numbers dropped dramatically in the 80's and have not rebounded. May have started with a long drought.
The MO Conservation folks claim it is not from the wild turkeys eating chicks in the spring (and they're probably correct) BUT wherever the deer and wild turkey populations have exploded the quail have gone way down.
Some pockets of healthy populations stretching from N. Central Mo west to N. Central KS and in the KS Flint Hills and way out in SW KS in the Cimmaron Grasslands but very discouraging overall.
Wherever some birds are found, I really believe they just get pounded. A nurse I worked with told me a few years ago that her brothers hunted family land around Hiawatha and Sebetha (NE KS) and killed 48 quail opening weekend and NEVER SAW ANOTHER BIRD THE REST OF THE SEASON-WELL SUPRISE!! I KNOW that many guys out chase down every single from every covey they find 'because it's the only day I'm going to get out this season' or 'I haven't seen any birds all season.'
Alot of the problem is unethical 'hunters' and I'm afraid it's really not just a few 'bad apples' One of the groups that double shot their limits around Garden City was a baptist preacher from Topeka and a couple of his church members-wouldn't Jesus be proud of those hypocrites!
I'm sorry this is so negative but I really am heartsick about what's happening to hunting in the midwest. We can all join QU and PF but not enough of us are landowners to make a difference. We can also petition
congress to continue the CRP program and our states to adequately fund the conservation departments (which do indeed need the $'s of out-of-state hunters). I'm afraid however, that not even shame will change the 'slob hunters' that are killing our sport and our image.


And what gets me so frosted is when they get nailed red handed.. The Judge just slaps them on the hand....... How about this... http://refugeforums.com/refuge/showthread.php?t=425068

I have hunted across the bay in NJ......
[/b]
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fin2feather
PostPosted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 7:27 am  Reply with quote
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Hey Rev,

That Baptist preacher from Topeka wasn't Fred Phelps, was it? Very Happy

Fin

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clayflingythingy
PostPosted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 8:41 am  Reply with quote



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Growing up in Central Ky I have witnessed the extinction of quail locally as a species. And the quail were gone long before turkey were reintroduced or the deer population exploded! When I was a kid there were many small dairy farms. These farms would have hayfields of red clover. As the small dairies became uneconomic the red clover field became fescue with the result that by the end of the 1980's quail are extinct over much of the area they were in when I was young.

And one more observation, don't put all the blame for the disappearance of quail on "city hunters". Despite big city enviromentalists who love to champion the "small family farm" I have been witness to many family farmers whose only thought is how much they can squeeze out of the land with no thought to sound enviromental practices. While this may seem shortsighted in the long term when you have a family to feed you are not necessarily worried about 20 years from now. Also, I have known a large number of rural people who believe that GOD gives them the right to kill any wild animal that is on their land to use for food. I have known farmers who would shoot and eat the last two of any species and think nothing of it. Rural people have long blamed the lack of game on "big city hunters" when they are responsible for much of the problem themselves. I know, I have seen it in my lifetime.
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KyBrad16ga
PostPosted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 9:11 am  Reply with quote
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revdocdrew wrote:
Wherever some birds are found, I really believe they just get pounded. A nurse I worked with told me a few years ago that her brothers hunted family land around Hiawatha and Sebetha (NE KS) and killed 48 quail opening weekend and NEVER SAW ANOTHER BIRD THE REST OF THE SEASON-WELL SUPRISE!! I KNOW that many guys out chase down every single from every covey they find 'because it's the only day I'm going to get out this season' or 'I haven't seen any birds all season.'

Alot of the problem is unethical 'hunters' and I'm afraid it's really not just a few 'bad apples' One of the groups that double shot their limits around Garden City was a baptist preacher from Topeka and a couple of his church members-wouldn't Jesus be proud of those hypocrites!

I'm sorry this is so negative but I really am heartsick about what's happening to hunting in the midwest. We can all join QU and PF but not enough of us are landowners to make a difference. We can also petition
congress to continue the CRP program and our states to adequately fund the conservation departments (which do indeed need the $'s of out-of-state hunters). I'm afraid however, that not even shame will change the 'slob hunters' that are killing our sport and our image.


Rev - That's distressing, I know that we have to very carefully watch our shooting on coveys down here so as not to overstress the birds. I can speak from experience that a friend here in Kentucky is a very careful steward of his hunting land. Also, among the group that I hunt with in MS, AL and FL we rotate shooting certain coveys and don't chase but one or two singles, so that the covey will gather other wild birds and recover fairly quickly.

If that is the way that people are hunting, then I certainly can't blame landowners for going into strict leasing or no hunting policies to preserve the birds that are there. It may come to strictly put and shoot situations if people keep this up. That's sad. One thing that will happen if this keeps up is that no young hunters will ever hunt quail, so as the older hunters die off, the birds may benefit from never having been hunted hard. I have heard stories of dedicated quail hunters who do not take their sons quail hunting because they see no future in the sport for them.

We definitely need to lobby hard for our Congressmen and Senators to reauthorize and fund CRP. It really has immensely benefited pheasant and turkey and other populations, if not quail. As a small landowner, I know that I am working with my dad on our farm to do what we can to improve our habitat. We have joined the local QU chapter, and NWTF, although we have so many turkey that its more of population management rather than establishment. We are also working with several neighbors to do similar things. Who knows, maybe we can bring back a fairly healthy quail population to our little corner of Kentucky.

Brad
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16gaugeguy
PostPosted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 10:58 am  Reply with quote
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In America today, the elected officials of the large urban population centers rule our national and state congresses. Many of these politicians have done so for 30 or more years of continuous office holding.

You folks have fixed the blame, the cause of the problem, without defining it. Until you come to realize that term limits and true proportional representation are the solution, this process of overrepresentation of the large urban population centers and the disenfranchization of the thinner populated rural areas by the well heeled of this nation will only get worse.

Without both of these solutions, the entrenched corrupt politicians who have gained their power from and solidified it within the vast population centers made up of immigrants and non-land holding urban dwellers will continue to dictate policy that favors them and their constituency and hurts the rural areas of our nation.

In the past 40 years, nearly all our presidents have been elected out of the South, the Southwest and California, or the Midwest. The only reason for this is that the presidential electoral college process has protected the rural vote here. But the president cannot dictate or control the monetary policies that actually run this nation. Congress does. He who controls the purse strings controls the direction of the nation. Without the funding, the presidential policies are no more than rhetoric.

If you want to turn this process around, then focus your energies on calling for a constituional convention and install these two safe guards all other 20th century democratic governments have adopted world wide.

Our present representational and political systems are archaic and do not work for us anymore. They were designed in the 18th century. They worked fairly well then when the vast majority of voters were both landholders and farmers. However, the founding fathers knew that our nation would change and made a constitutional provision for such circumstances. The constitutional convention and the process of adopting constitutional amendments.

It will take both organization and hard work, but the problems can be solved and solved peacefully. If we don't take up the task, then this nation will collapse of its own corruption and imbalance. Changes will come, but they will come in a brutal and bloody manner, and most likely, they will not be positive ones. Count on it. 16GG.
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blackduck
PostPosted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 1:12 pm  Reply with quote
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Having hunted Pheasants and Quail in Iowa for the better part of 30 years I would, in my throughly amateur opinion have to say that recent changes in the CRP program and farming practices have provided some benefits to the birds. I would point to increased terracing and planting of CRP cover on terraces as a benefit over the plow it all under farming of the 70-80's and the loosening of CRP cover types that can be planted. Seems to be much more Switch grass versus shorter Fescue/Brome grass and clearly the birds like this stuff. I have seen an improvement in Quail numbers on properties we hunt that have Switch grass on them.

Just my amateur 2 cents...
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Wolfchief
PostPosted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 6:28 pm  Reply with quote



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blackduck: I think you are more right than you know. For 31 years I have been in farm finance; first with Farm Credit services, and, since 1985, in banking. I know a LOT of farmers: "rich"ones, "poor" ones, and those hanging on by fingers and toes. It is implausible and presumptuous to generalize about any "class" of people---but most of the farmers' acreage that I've been on is well taken care of and they enjoy seeing wildlife--whether they hunt it or not. I've heard all of the BS about how much the Government programs cost and about how the farmer uses the taxpayer, rapes the land and all that other happy horseshit---but I've SEEN the financial statements, TAX RETURNS AND the cash flows so it's evident to me and my colleagues that the great most of the farm population is not getting rich. All of the conservation practices blackduck refers to are done voluntarily---by farmers---yes, partly for the government payment but mostly because they still want to have land for their kids to farm, 100 years from now.

If most of us had to make an everyday living dealing with all the paperwork and BS dealt out by the US Government, and also had to contend with negotiations with their Co-op elevator man, gas man, seed salesman, equipment dealer, ASCS employees and the rest of it, ALONG WITH the weather, seasonality, biotechnology and changing politics as to the market they sell to----you would quickly find another way to make a living !!!

So if you want to complain about the quality of the hunting and find reasons for it, that's fine---just don't use poor land husbandry as one of them because---with some exceptions---it just ain't true. Where would you hunt if the farmer didn't let you go?

And that concludes my rant, which I will not apologize for.

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revdocdrew
PostPosted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 6:32 pm  Reply with quote
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Fin: I've heard brother Fred almost never leaves his compound now and only with a bullet proof vest-tho' wise if hunting with the VP! Laughing
CFT: Lots of blame to go around-city and farm-folks both. Might be appropriate to observe the dramatic changes in rural Midwest the last 10-20 yrs. There are some great people left out there but many of the 'best and brightest' leave for college and never return. I know 5 MD's in their 50's in KC who grew up in Ulysses, KS-left and didn't look back. And the parents of these guys are moving away as they age, or rapidly 'moving on' so to speak. Western KS has become another world the last 10 yrs-anglo kids now in the school systems in Liberal, Garden City, and Dodge are the minority and English as a second language classes are required everywhere. Good? Bad? I don't know but it is reality. Add Methamphetamine, which is just destroying communities in MO (number 1 in meth labs), KS, NB, and Iowa, and 'small town life' is sadly becoming much different than even the 80's. As small towns go, I think so goes hunting. Fewer and fewer people remain connected to the land and feel, as does KyBrad, that they have an obligation to steward the land. And fewer and fewer young people get involved in hunting-just not very exciting for big city kids today. Almost none of my buddies in KC could get their teens interested-just not enough flash for the investment in time and effort.
Agree with Blackduck and KyBrad about how CRP has helped but also honestly understand the feeling of someone in Baltimore or San Diego as to why should their tax money go to benefit quail, pheasant, deer, and hunters in the midwest.
Gee guys-somebody go buy something neat and get me out of this funk Crying or Very sad Never mind-will just go play with that happy little setter pup Very Happy
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revdocdrew
PostPosted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 6:41 pm  Reply with quote
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OK, I feel better now.
Wolfchief and I were typing at the same time and I very much agree with him re: the FAMILY FARMER-you gotta be smart, creative, flexible, innovative, and by golly be able to grow some crops/lifestock good weather of bad if you're still making it today. And the vast majority are good stewards of their land and can't afford to kill all the fescue and plant prairie grass. BUT- I'm not so sure about the big corporate farms with headquarters 700 miles from the poor guy out on the tractor.
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fin2feather
PostPosted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 6:43 pm  Reply with quote
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Chief,

Thanks for that, and if we had one of those "bow down" emoticons, I'd post it here. My wife's family owns a small piece of west-Kansas farm country that I am priviledged to be a small part of, and to hunt on. We have that land only because my late father-in-law, a man who loved that little piece of worn out Kansas dirt, used to say "Better hang on to it; might have to raise a tater there some day." He knew the golden rule of land ownership: They ain't makin' it anymore, so if you got some, you better hold on to it.

I'm not sure he made a dime off of that land in his later years, but he farmed it anyway, because that's what you do when you're a farmer. Now, we've put part of it in the quail habitat program, and hope to help rebuild that game bird in the western part of the state. Jessie J. would have approved.

Every time I hear about how the farmer is ripping off the government with all that "free money" they get, I cringe, but usually hold my tongue. I just wish, as you say, that the folks who think that would be forced to try and make a living out there. I think they'd find that "free money" isn't as plentiful as they think. And as a guy who likes to chase a bird there now and then, I'm very thankful that there's a few of those old boys out there still trying to make it work.

Fin

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I feel a warm spot in my heart when I meet a man whiling away an afternoon...and stopping to chat with him, hear the sleek lines of his double gun whisper "Sixteen." - Gene Hill, Shotgunner's Notebook
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662
PostPosted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 6:46 pm  Reply with quote
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Wolfchief,

Thanks for sharing your experience. My gut told me it's true, but I can't be that objective or factual about it because so many of my friends and relatives still farm in Nebraska, my home state. So thanks for saying something that needed to be said.

And yes, it's nice to know a lot of landowners--they give me permission AND "guide" services!!
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revdocdrew
PostPosted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 11:19 am  Reply with quote
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Not many responses from out-of-staters who pay to hunt in KS (like I do in S. Dakota) Any thoughts out there? Parker Trojan-what do taxpayers in 'la-la-land' think about CRP in the midwest? East coast guys?
KS had a very strange winter-warmest on record in KC. There should be lots of hens making baby birds in the spring-we need to pray there is not a cold/wet stretch when they hatch.
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revdocdrew
PostPosted: Tue May 09, 2006 4:18 pm  Reply with quote
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I'm moving this thread back up the 'General Discussion' Forum because the issue of over-hunting and conservation has come up on another site.
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