Quote:
Originally Posted by skeet
Nulle.. I kind of agree with you except for one thing..it used to be incumbent upon the SPORTSMEN of this country to shoot hawks and crows. When the use of DDT was banned to help them(hawks) recover there was wording put in the ESA to protect hawks and owls etc..even the common crow was given protection in the name of saving the mexican crow. I have never seen so many hawks as we have now. Crows either. Where I came from in Md the poor bobwhite quail had so many critters after them they really can't make a real comeback...even when they have good places to live breed and hide. The foxes were terrible there because they were protected by law. because I tried to control the predators of the quail I actually had 3 coveys on approx 40 acres of CReP land. That was 3 coveys more than the neighboring farmer had on his 260 acres next door to me. Sportsmans dollars are being wasted daily in the name of predators, from hawks to wolves. We withj our license dollars and other fees are paying for poor science to the detriment of game animals and birds as well as song birds etc. I really don't worry about the eagles but I have 5 Goldens that live on the cliff behind my house. That is a lot of Eagles in less than a square mile. If i had a little ankle biter i sure wouldn't let iut out around here. We had skwerls here but the little horned owls have wiped 'em out..prairie dogs too..on my place.. Do I want to wipe 'em out??..of course not..but we have wayyy too many predators now. And we surely didn't need the wolves that the do gooders gave us. They want 'em protected and they don't even live here.
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What we need is one heck of a balancing act, and we aren't very good at figuring it out. In Maryland, there is a pretty good problem with deer and resident canadian geese. Problem there is the lack of predation. Then, there is the lack of pheasants and quail in Maryland, and the problem there is over predation. On a farm I waterfowl hunt on, a trapper caught 21 foxes on 110 acres in less than a week. That is a lot of foxes.
I have seen an eagle by my place in Maryland, and I am nowhere near the Eastern Shore. I was shocked when I saw it, because I was outside with my daughter who was under 2 at the time and it made me realize that if the eagle had decided to grab her, there wouldn't be a thing I could do about it. It still makes me sick today to think about it. We have a couple pretty large foxes that run around our place and deer that come up to the cars and the front door. Ultimately, I think we are doing a piss poor job of game management, but that is just my opinion.