When I was a boy

[whiterock]

growing up on this place, I could flush a covey of quail walking to the mailbox, horned toads and striped lizards were all around, jackrabbits were thick. Lots of them roadkilled, running through the fields, 4 or 5 at a time in the pasture at night when you drove through with lights on. Don't remember the last time i saw any of these, except the one horned toad I found about 25 years ago and caught to show my children, who had never seen one.
I know that fire ants are supposed to be the cause of the loss of horn toads around here. Don't know why the rest are missing. Post on coyotes got me thinking of this. Those rascals are all over the country here.
ED

[FarmboyBill]

Havnt seen them here either, tho it seems salamanders are making a slight comeback. I think my chickens kept them up around the barnyard.

[FarmboyBill]

NE Okla

[suitcase_sally]

I know what you mean. I haven't heard a whip o'will in years. On the other hand, turkeys have become so abundant that they are almost a nuisance. My Audubon Field Guide doesn't even show them being in Michigan, but last fall I saw HUNDREDS in a group in the Thumb area.

[salmonslayer]

Its an interesting topic as far as cause and effect. We have an abundance of wildlife on our place with rabbits everywhere, plentiful quail (I am kind of wondering if someone around here raises them and releases them), wild turkeys, deer, owls, ponds full of bull frogs etc and yet we are surrounded by coyotes.

So far the coyotes dont seem to bother pets or livestock and I can only assume thats because there is so much small game around. We literally start getting the howling and yipping about 1900 every night and it continues off and on for most of the night on three sides of us.

[Oldcountryboy]

Whiterock, the great outdoors is dying and seems most people dont even care. I grew up in the 60's and 70's on a spring creek. Quail and rabbits were abundant all up and down the creek banks, lots of crawdads, minnows, dartmouths, gulpins, and many other aquatic wildlife in the creek. Night time come you could hear the whipperwills and bullfrogs singing away. Bats flying overhead everywhere catching bugs.

Now days the trees are all cut down along the streamsides. Forrested land turned into cattle fields. Chicken manure spread every year on them to make the grass grow and much of it is washed into the streams. No more big fish, very few crawdads, no dragonfly's, hardly any minnows, no quail, rabbits very thinnly populated. Haven't heard a whipperwill or bullfrog in years on the very same creek that I still live on.

If you grew up with nature, you realize all the damage that is being done to our environment. But most people are more interested in making money off the land instead of enjoying the real beauty of nature.

[Harry Chickpea]

I flushed one today going up to the mailbox. A whistlepig lives about 100 ft from the house. There are small-fry fish in the creek every year. When I was mowing yesterday, I had to mow around a tortoise. There are fire ants around, but they prefer the fields to the wooded areas. I did notice a frog this spring, but they aren't plentiful. Nature is always in flux.

[vicker]

In my youth we raised and trained bird dogs. We always had a quail in the freezer. Now they are all gone. In my are it is mostly due to lack of habitat. Quail like the border areas between a field and the woods, and hedgerows. Those areas are rare now days. But, and this is no lie, I was laying in bed this morning and heard a bob white calling out near the edge of the yard First one I have heard in many years here. Back there used to be full of them.

[braggscowboy]

Not sure if where you live, you may not have wild hogs. I think that is one of the most destructive of all predators. The will get all the low nesting bird nests, young turkeys, fawns and any other nesting animals they can get. Hunting pressure is not the problem, land management and another problem, feral cats. I can't say that is the problem in all places, but in my area it is I think. We have turkeys, but not as many and we have way, way to many hogs in this part of the country. I have a pretty good crop of fawns, but no hogs here at the house. No quail for years, but it does not seem the state has a good push for quail, but do for deer. High mortality rate on quail in dry times, which we have had and hard winters. Things can be better, but will never be the same as when we were kids. Wildlife everywhere, but few deer! Lots of deer now.

[whiterock]

Haven't heard bullfrogs in years either. Got an abundance of hogs. Not as much road kill as used to be either. Occasional possum, coon or armadillo. I do have some big bobcats in the area and some mt. lions have been reported in the area.

I'm 30 miles or so from both Dallas and Ft. Worth. Still on the place I grew up on.
Ed

[jwal10]

It goes in cycles here. Lot of pheasants, deer and turkeys right now. More quail than in the last 10 years, not near as many song birds, elk and big fish in the river. Lot of the small cuthroat above the falls. 20 years ago there was very little of any aquatic life in the river, so it is coming back too. My little farm has a lot of hedge rows, we see a lot of birds and rabbits. One day we saw 6 pairs of pheasants wandering around....James

[farmerDale]

Interesting thread! My experience has been the opposite though. When I was a kid there were no moose, no elk, and never bears around here. No wolves, no fishers, few geese, fewer ducks. Beavers were rare.

Mink, muskrats, White-tail deer, raccoons, skunks, foxes. These were more common than now.

But in the past 15 years or so, we have fewer white tails, more snakes, more salamaders, more frogs, more coyotes, moose are so common it is rare to NOT see one any given day, elk are everywhere, mule deer are everywhere, geese and ducks are thick, sandhill cranes now nest here. Bears are always about, wolves are fairly common, and fishers have been caught. Beavers are in every pond with more than 2 feet of water.

We have less mink, fewer foxes.

To be honest, I am not entirely sure what has happened here. It is amazing. A new equlibrium in habitat? Wetter conditions??? I really have no idea why it has become this way, but I'll take it.

It is different everywhere I guess is my point. All I know is if TEOTWAWKI occurs, I would do much better now with this abundance than I would have even 15 years ago.

I have no idea.

[vicker]

Yes, when I was a kid we had no turkeys, and now there are lots. Same with gators. Up in WV white tails were fairly few and now they are like rats. Cotton tails are plentiful up there, but not many here in SC. As a matter of fact, I can't remember seeing one, alive or as road kill, in the year and a half since I've been back.

[fishhead]

We've upset the balance of nature so I'm not surprised when species disappear or appear. The current rate of extinction is equal to previous major extinctions and I expect it to accelerate even without the influence of climate change simply because our population continues to explode at a rate of 1 BILLION new mouths to feed every 12 years. We're already above carrying capacity and have been for many decades. The only reason we can feed ourselves now is because of our supply of fossil fuels for fertilizer.

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/p...nction_crisis/

[Oldcountryboy]

Originally Posted by farmerDale

All I know is if TEOTWAWKI occurs, I would do much better now with this abundance than I would have even 15 years ago..

I was thinking a while back that if this little depression continues for a long while, we may not be able to survive like my grandparents did back int the 30's. My grandparents, who were Cherokee's and stuck here in Northeast Oklahoma, didn't have much to begin with. There were no factories or other jobs anywhere close by and they had to raise or forage all their foods from the land they lived on. They caught fish and crawdads out of the creek, wild game all around the homestead, and raised in thier garden what they could. Foraged for berries, nuts, and fungi from the wooded lands. They planted acres of foods to raise 11 kids on.

But most people around here couldnt do that anymore. 1. Most people don't have access to hundreds of wooded acres anymore to do any foraging. 2. Most people don't even own enough acres to grow a years supply of garden foods either. and 3. Land and Aquatic wildlife are not abundant anymore, except deer. But it's hard to get access to hunt deer anymore. It would be rough for us if we got hit real hard financially.

[joebill]

It's the same old same old. I was raised in the midwest, and there were zero deer there in central IL., except in captivity, now it's swarming with them.

We used to have more small game here (NM desert) locally, than we do now, but we had a silly wolf-dog resque outfit down the valley and the three hundred howling wolves kept the coyotes away. Now they are gone and the coyotes are back. While the wolves were here, we had great numbers of ravens. Now that the wolves are gone, no ravens.

Man affects some species for the worse and some for the better no matter what he does. It will change according to locality and what man is up to. Much of the desert southwest has populations of wildlife that couln't exist where it is without man, because of the cattle watering holes and tanks. Likewise, you can put "no wildlife" signs on your hayfields, but it don't keep out the javelina, deer, elk, or the bunnies.

Personally, I don't think we have overpopulated the planet to the point where we can't feed ourselves. As of a few years ago, 40% of the planet was still classified as "wilderness" and according to the folks who designed the Wallipini, If I recall correctly, it takes about a hundred or so square feet of greenhouse to feed a person year round.

I have been hearing about us being doomed within the next decade for nearly 7 of those decades, and remember my folks talking about it being the same all their lives. I recall the drout of the 50's, and how it was because of the A-bombs we had dropped and how it was all over for us.

All just my opinion, but man was tossing virgins down volcanos to apease the "earth gods" a long time ago, and I'm pretty sure the planet was not as easy to "offend" as they thought or as some think today.........Joe

[bja105]

"Normal" wildlife populations, snowfalls, temperatures, and women's fashion must all be set in early adolescence, and any later variation means doom and ----ation.

The old hunters would tell me how in PA, ringneck pheasants were as common as stinkbugs are now. Of course both stinkbugs and ringnecks are non-native invasive species from China. People blame farming methods for their decline, but that is bull, its the lack of DDT! in the 60's and 70's, when these guys "normal" was set, there were few hawks and owls. Now we are loaded with raptors.

Nature is always changing. Populations and climates change, and always have. There used to be farming in Greenland, there used to be dinosaurs. Deer and turkeys used to be rare around here, but Polio and Smallpox were thriving.

Things are just fine. If you played in the dirt as much as a kid, you would find just as many things living in it. Or, maybe we're all gonna die!

[JoePa]

I often think if I could survive if I couldn't buy food from a store anymore - I grow a big garden and always put away potates , cabbage and winter squash - I have chickens so I would be getting eggs - there are a lot of squirrels, deer and other critters around so I could get meat - there's a lake down the road and I could get some fish once in awhile - I keep a pretty good store of canned goods in the cellar - I buy 50 lb. bags of flour and oatmeal whenever my supply gets low - store a big bucket of popcorn - I feel pretty confident that I could make it ok - would have to take awhile to get used to that way of life - got a wood stove and plenty of firewood - I always keep about 30 gallons of gas on hand in the event I would need to run my generator to get water from the well - got guns and ammo too - I have 12 acres with a stream running through - I have been thinking of getting rabbits and a steer or two - as long as I stay healthy I think that I would be ok -