Scarcity of small game

T. Erdelyi said:
I know it was beginnin' of fall when this was taken but you see there is no shortage of small game here.
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T, this is classic. They have to be one of the most intelligent "wild" animals in the outdoors. Guess the overhang & eaves stopped their progress upwards ? ? ? :)
Be safe.
 
Actually we have seen an increase in small game with the decrease in coyotes. I hope the coyotes come back because the deer population has grown considerably here. I wish more predators would be introduced here. The dumb ass rednecks around here will kill anything though. Especially if it gets to knawing on their deer harvesting.
 
Coyotes have thinned out some of the game around my house. They seem to run in cycles. I had a lot of pheasants and rabbits around my place, but I've been seeing few of them, and more coyotes than usual.

There was a fellow who hunted them for a couple of years, around my place and during that stretch I heard a lot of pheasants and saw a lot of other animals.

I will say that squirrels seem to be doing fine, it's the rabbits and pheasants that are conspicuous by their absence. I do think the coyotes do tend to kill more in the way of house pets and semi-domesticated cats than anything, since they aren't as savvy to the ways of predators as genuine wild critters.

In the state parks and forests around me, I think things are fairly in balance. I've not seen a lot of any particular kind of game, but plenty of sign. I didn't kill a deer this last season, but I just found out from a long-time local hunter that I've been hunting the wrong area.

SP
 
spraay said:
Coyotes have thinned out some of the game around my house. They seem to run in cycles. I had a lot of pheasants and rabbits around my place, but I've been seeing few of them, and more coyotes than usual.

There was a fellow who hunted them for a couple of years, around my place and during that stretch I heard a lot of pheasants and saw a lot of other animals.

I will say that squirrels seem to be doing fine, it's the rabbits and pheasants that are conspicuous by their absence. I do think the coyotes do tend to kill more in the way of house pets and semi-domesticated cats than anything, since they aren't as savvy to the ways of predators as genuine wild critters.

In the state parks and forests around me, I think things are fairly in balance. I've not seen a lot of any particular kind of game, but plenty of sign. I didn't kill a deer this last season, but I just found out from a long-time local hunter that I've been hunting the wrong area.

SP
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Come to my house, you can ride down the pasture in your truck and rope all the deer you want, or jump off the running board and bulldog 'em like a rodeo. Damn things ain't scared and simply need to be shot and left for the buzzards.
 
its a cycle around here. by spring rabbits will be thick again cotton tails and jacks both. possums and raccoons too. i am ready for a few of the coyotes to move on for a while though and not come right up to the house.

take it easy
cricket
 
cricketdave said:
its a cycle around here. by spring rabbits will be thick again cotton tails and jacks both. possums and raccoons too. i am ready for a few of the coyotes to move on for a while though and not come right up to the house.

take it easy
cricket
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Yep, that's where I draw the line with coyotes and deer. Start hangin around my house and you be in the kill zone.
 
We have a lot of coyotes around our house. I haven't seen many squirrels or rabbits. We have a neighbor that has been dumping dead cattle in a creek which has only increased the problem. They have been so bad they have been coming up in our yard and horse pens so i have to watch our small dogs and mini horses. I am about to the point that I am going to have to start thinning them out for the safety of my kids and animals.
 
R.A.T. said:
Come to my house, you can ride down the pasture in your truck and rope all the deer you want, or jump off the running board and bulldog 'em like a rodeo. Damn things ain't scared and simply need to be shot and left for the buzzards.
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Sounds familiar. They been in the front yard too much around here. Acorns acorns acorns. Bush-hogging near the woods took away their cover and now they aren't around much. Did have a red fox running around the front yard in the first snow last year.
 
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R.A.T. said:
Actually we have seen an increase in small game with the decrease in coyotes. I hope the coyotes come back because the deer population has grown considerably here. I wish more predators would be introduced here. The dumb ass rednecks around here will kill anything though. Especially if it gets to knawing on their deer harvesting.
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One of my neighbors didn't believe I had seen a mountain lion out here, until he seen an article in a magazine where Colorado/Oklahoma had released 5 mountain lions in heavily populated regions, they will hunt a 25 mile radius and there primary food source is deer..

You guys need a mountain lion.. :D
 
Now that somebody mentioned possums... We've got LOADS of the dumb things running around this winter. They crawl into holes when it's cold but whenever there's a day of thawing they come out in the middle of the day in hordes. I've seen more possums in the past month than in the entire past year.
 
Well Cricket it is like this up here in northeast Texas. They cut all the hard wood in the river bottoms and around and there are very fue Squirrels out there.But the folks here all have bird feeders in there yards.So there are
more squirrels around the houses there in the woods.So I guess that the coyotes are just fallowing the squirrels to town.Thats the way I see it here anyway.:D
Hawkeye
 
Hawkeye5 said:
Well Cricket it is like this up here in northeast Texas. They cut all the hard wood in the river bottoms and around and there are very fue Squirrels out there.But the folks here all have bird feeders in there yards.So there are
more squirrels around the houses there in the woods.So I guess that the coyotes are just fallowing the squirrels to town.Thats the way I see it here anyway.:D
Hawkeye
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I have a little family lease in roganville and the coyotes are thick and not scared of anything...they come right into camp at night
 
Same here it cycles alot, It seems like every three years on the jack rabbits....

there will be shit loads and then bam its hard to find them
 
Just to clarify after reading some of the posts. We have tons of raccoons, deer, armadillos. It is just we don't have rabbits like we used to.
 
Seems fine here in MO. In fact, sometimes we have the opposite problem; everyone shoots coyotes. We generally have really good crops so the deer thrive so much so that some wouldn't have their feelings hurt if the coyotes got more of them.
 
All the rabbits here moved from the bush into the city.:eek: No Joke. I see half dozen a day. In the bush I see none. My guess is fewer predators and more food in the city.
 
Maybe a little off topic but I found this one out of the ordinary. Back a few years ago, my brother bought a new house in a new subdivision. It had previously been farm land. This was back behind the Nissan plant in Smyrna, TN. It was summer and his wife was looking out the window and saw a rabbit in the middle of a neighbor's front yard. All of a sudden an east Asian-looking woman driving on the quiet street stopped her car and appeared to have spotted the rabbit also. The woman hopped out of her car and chased the rabbit down over into some shrubbery next to the house, and clubbed the rabbit. She then took it back to her car to take home apparently for supper.
 
I thought of putting up some spring snare traps on my property but with my luck I'll probably strangle a neighbors' cat.:(
 
We have a couple foxes, lots of rabbits and tons of squirrels. Coyotes live further out in the woods, with the bears, who on a rare occassion will wander closer to town.
 
Router said:
Maybe a little off topic but I found this one out of the ordinary. Back a few years ago, my brother bought a new house in a new subdivision. It had previously been farm land. This was back behind the Nissan plant in Smyrna, TN. It was summer and his wife was looking out the window and saw a rabbit in the middle of a neighbor's front yard. All of a sudden an east Asian-looking woman driving on the quiet street stopped her car and appeared to have spotted the rabbit also. The woman hopped out of her car and chased the rabbit down over into some shrubbery next to the house, and clubbed the rabbit. She then took it back to her car to take home apparently for supper.
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Darwinism at work! Sounds like TN needs smarter and/or faster rabbits. ha ha
 
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