[HillbillynOhio]

Pheasants and Quail is a problem, but I hunt South East Ohio and we have turkey everywhere. Had 15 head at my house alone and constantly have seen 15 to 30 head in the field. Is the rest of the state that bad?

Things aren't going particularly well.

Ohio no longer holds an expansive population of ring-necked pheasants and bobwhite quail, a reality that’s been decades in the making and that has demonstrated stubborn resistance to fixing. Wild turkey numbers, meanwhile, currently fall short of wildlife managers’ hopes and hunters' expectations.

Awareness of such declines escapes everyday attention. However, dedicated organizations have noticed and consequently decided to ramp up efforts to mend what they can.

Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, two related national groups with chapters in the Buckeye State, announced in November a five-year partnership with the Ohio Division of Wildlife effort to “enhance upland bird habitat on public lands.”

Efforts underway to increase Ohio's game birds populations

Research is underway to help Ohio's wild turkey populations, while organizations also seek to improve habitats for quail and pheasants.

www.zanesvilletimesrecorder.com

 

[Beagle Huntsman]

I live in SE Ohio too and I would bet we don’t have 25% of the turkey population we had 20 years ago. Grouse are gone. Bobwhites only exist in scattered small remnant populations, probably doomed as well. I don’t believe there is anything that can be done to make much of a difference in the long term. Too many factors stacked against the birds.

 

[R. Toker]

Turnkeys have been on a slide for the past few years . Although last years hatch seems to have been better so this spring will tell a lot. We seriously need to start killing some predators. Especially bobcats.

 

[thornton]

......Awareness of such declines escapes everyday attention. However, dedicated organizations have noticed and consequently decided to ramp up efforts to mend what they can....

The issue has hardly escaped everyday attention, since many of us have lived it.

Research?, good grief....other than re recent possible health aspects, what is needed for gamebird recoveries or, better put, a flattening of the downward trends, has been known for decades upon decades.
This latest interest is most about banquet tables, as Job #1.....research is simply a feel-good word meant for Public consumption and money generation.

Some game "organizations", like the RGS, sadly defined themselves by their inaction and write-off attitude....others, like PF, continue to play a very important position in their own comparably easy game.
The time for most research tho is past....it is even past the time to utilize proven research for some species.
I lost faith in a guvmint appreciation for the value of research when I saw the ODNR bug out of the ACGRP before the study was even completed....and that was nearly a quarter century ago.

Before too many get all birdy over quail.....Ohio remains on the very edge of viability for that species and weather will continue to call the shots for that bird. Habitat will never overcome Ohio being a marginal section of the bobwhite's range...no matter that many of us saw reasonable tho fluctuating numbers in the past....I still recall a path in the snow 3' wide from bobwhites in Athens county in the early 60s.
Beyond that...I wish PF the best of luck as they may well be the best of them.

 

[Beagle Huntsman]

I once had an old woman tell me about how she and her family would track and find quail at night during winter when snow was on. They would take along a bushel basket with a hole in the bottom, place it quickly over the covey, then reach down inside and break the necks of the fluttering birds. She said her mom would fix them the next morning for breakfast. That was probably in the 1930s or 40s when quail were very abundant in Ohio. She lived in Jackson County then. There are still a few quail scattered around Jackson. I miss the bobwhite and the meadowlark most of all the birds I saw frequently as a kid.

 

[robertsirc]

ODNR posted on Twitter about this and I asked them if we can have a no close season for Raccoons. But of course ODNR never responded to that.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1618617114335784962

 

[thornton]

You can not kill your way back to higher populations of any gamebird....even given the lightning strike possibility of greater incentives re ground predators or the true impossibility of a revision of federal law re avian predators.
Each idea also carries trade-offs which many taxpayers would find unacceptable....it being unwise to disregard any voter.

When considering what is actually required and the hurdles in front, it has come down, imso and without travel as an option,....to accepting fundamental societal change bringing unrecoverable loss and the need to focus upon the mimicking of past hunting delivered by the better game organizations or the weaker option of whatever the state can pretend is acceptable.....some states do better in this regard than others.
Within that acceptance should be an equal concern to do no harm by all concerned...especially hunters....that, will give more critters a better chance to hit a level playing field.
Basically, both extirpation and extinction are normal......expecting ruffed grouse to again hit levels in Ohio delivered by Progress is as silly as the idea of bringing back the wolf....or the elk, for that matter.
Sadly, Time passes for many species, in many areas.

Be nice if the greater and more basic loss of non-game, as mentioned by Beagle, were higher on everyone's radar.
That tho...is likely asking too much, too much effort to mourn either the meadowlark or the golden-winged warbler.
Too many folks do not even own a Sibley today.

 

[Deehntr56]

Speaking of the blizzard of 1978….. Winter of 1977 was probably one of the top two worst weather periods I was in…found the newspaper article from my parents estate my mom kept. RIP mom and dad.

Record cold and snow for most of the winter. If you can zoom in the pic you can read some of the data.

And Climate change is a myth- I have seen so many swings of weather over my lifetime, mother nature does what she wants when she wants, and it has nothing to do with our "influencing" it.

The storm hurt the populations but they were struggling back then before the storm. Our 183 acre PA property on the other hand had good grouse, pheasant and a small quail population until the mid 1990’s. It was just over the border of Ohio in Crawford county and south of Erie.

It was not unusual to flush around half a dozen wild grouse and pheasant and a quail covey now and then when we walked the perimeter fields on the property.

As the 90’s played out we saw less and less and the surrounding habitat didn’t change. Fields were being planted the same with rotational crops and field edges were the same with none lost.

 

[Beagle Huntsman]

Speaking of the blizzard of 1978….. Winter of 1977 was probably one of the top two worst weather periods I was in…found the newspaper article from my parents estate my mom kept. RIP mom and dad.

Record cold and snow for most of the winter. If you can zoom in the pic you can read some of the data.

And Climate change is a myth- I have seen so many swings of weather over my lifetime, mother nature does what she wants when she wants, and it has nothing to do with our "influencing" it.

The storm hurt the populations but they were struggling back then before the storm. Our 183 acre PA property on the other hand had good grouse, pheasant and a small quail population until the mid 1990’s. It was just over the border of Ohio in Crawford county and south of Erie.

It was not unusual to flush around half a dozen wild grouse and pheasant and a quail covey now and then when we walked the perimeter fields on the property.

As the 90’s played out we saw less and less and the surrounding habitat didn’t change. Fields were being planted the same with rotational crops and field edges were the same with none lost.


View attachment 57049

Climate change is no "myth".

 

[Deehntr56]

Climate change is no "myth".

We will agree to disagree then.

 

[R. Toker]

If we could just build more windmills and use electric vehicles all this would stop. I saw an old man on TV, he doesn’t know where he is half the time but he’s sure this is the biggest threat to humankind.

 

[Beagle Huntsman]

If we could just build more windmills and use electric vehicles all this would stop. I saw an old man on TV, he doesn’t know where he is half the time but he’s sure this is the biggest threat to humankind.

That old man is right about that. Maybe wrong about some other things, but right about the threat from climate change. It could be argued that nuclear war is a bigger threat to humanity (and all of nature), but I believe war is more avoidable than climate disaster at this point. We just waited too long to address it.

 

[R. Toker]

I’m curious how you would address it? That same old man has been in DC for 50 plus years. What did he ever do about it? Made serval million from other countries. That much I know lol

 

[Beagle Huntsman]

At least he, and his party, are making an effort now. They get credit for that.

 

[thornton]

No credit from me to either an old man battling cognitive decline while ignoring issues immediately set to fundamentally change America or to a young girl battling autism who is being used most as a cover girl for fund-raising world-wide while ignoring all actors but bad old America.
Also, no credit to either party as both are most concerned with a selfish look at power and personal advancement over Country.

Weather cycles, always has and always will, and using that to claim the old global warming or the easier to imagine newer climate change appears most as political fodder or as a means to try and rationalize sad changes seen over the short span of a human life....or, to gig America and drop her down several notches.
Change tho, is constant.

We would be better put in the concern for a decline in the Ogalalla aquifer from what is sucked out rather than from what pees in.
Repeat that consideration.
Not to mention trash handling or that earlier mentioned fundamental change at and in our home.
As with problems in the hunting and fishing fields tho....people go first for blame or even honest concern re Change to what has little chance to affect their immediate lives.
That is unwise and sadly predictable...wherever it is happening.

All of which is not to say that declines in bird species or bugs and all the rest are to be ignored....I would say that those and other changes should be addressed but, addressed in a more immediate and honest, albeit personally uncomfortable, manner rather than thru the end line of ultimate rises in ocean levels, deserts created or silly rain bombs all blame thanks to America.
This latter trifecta of the moment shuts needed ears rather than opens them.
The old story.
I doubt 2023 will see anything but a furthering of Shirts vs Skins entrenchments tho and a focus far too far in the Future for all but some daily feel-good action.

Good luck, to all, in not picking a team jersey.

 

[Beagle Huntsman]

Asperger’s syndrome, not autism. Very impressive young lady. Walks the talk.

 

[thornton]

Thanks for the correction....I thought that syndrome was in the autism spectrum, perhaps not.
Were I more concerned, I would look it up.

I do not find her impressive, I do find her limited in both thought and experience, which are exactly the attributes necessary for her particular spokesman role.
However, rather than "walking the walk"...she really is just taking the easy path for pleasing her particular high-five crowd.
She found the applause, in other words.....now, I hope she eventually finds herself.

 

[Beagle Huntsman]

She’s doing what she can to get the world to wake up to the reality of climate change - something anyone whose head is not buried in sand can easily see for themselves. Hardly an “easy path”, sadly to say.

 

[thornton]

"Easy" applied, as written, to pleasing her high-five crowd.
Sand, fwliw, can affect reading comprehension....reading comprehension is a good first step towards understanding


Thankfully, commonsense does not permit a total and blind bandwagon effect for the young lady's spiel.

Hopefully, folks come to a greater focus upon other actual and immediate issues of importance facing the country and the world.

 

[Beagle Huntsman]

Yeah, whatever. Enjoy your warm winter. Temps close to the 60s next week…