6.5-300 BEE
Well-Known Member
He was right ! We don't shoot lactating cow elk now do we ?
Master Bedroom Woodchucks!
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He was right ! We don't shoot lactating cow elk now do we ?
nicholasjohn
Well-Known Member
I don't think that is what has depleted the chuck population. When I was growing up in western PA, everybody shot them all the time, and they just bred faster to stay ahead of the threat of extermination. They can hide from shooters so well that you can never kill them all. What they can't hide from is coyotes. In those days, the red fox was the biggest predator they had to deal with, other than the occasional barn-yard dog. A fully grown red fox would have his hands full if he grabbed a ten-pound woodchuck, and only the babies were really vulnerable to ol' Reynard. Bobcats were rare to non-existent in that area, so that wasn't a factor. Now, though, things are different ….. coyotes are EVERYWHERE, and they are big, nasty and hungry all the time in that region. I think that is why the chuck population is struggling. Even the coyotes, though, can never kill them all. They do have the population pared back to where the dairy farmers don't have to poison them as much anymore.
6.5-300 BEE
Well-Known Member
Where I lived and hunted the chucks were wiped out long before the Yotes showed up.
Deputy819
Well-Known Member
.....and yet ANOTHER very valid point! The internet hyenas are already salivating, I'm afraid.
nicholasjohn
Well-Known Member
Where was that ?
6.5-300 BEE
Well-Known Member
read back
Around here the population seems to come and go though not nearly as many as there used to be. There's probably a lot of reasons why but who knows. Predators are definitely not what they used to be. For the record I don't condone kill just to kill BUT like nichalosjohn said the best time to shoot a woodchuck is whenever you see one. Let me clarify. I live and work around a levee system. ANYTHING that digs a hole within eyesight of a levee has to go regardless when. Just like a coyote circling a pasture full of lambs or calves. It's him or your livestock. Unfortunate yes but also a necessity at times.
nicholasjohn
Well-Known Member
I used to hunt whitetails with a bunch of guys in northwestern Minnesota, where the farmers all build a dike around the farm and the homestead. The spring floods would otherwise take them out about every third year. Up there it's badgers that like to dig, and they're delighted that they don' have a lot of woodchucks. It's a toss-up between the diggers and the beavers damming up the culverts that go under the roads. It's pretty much shoot-on-sight with either of those animals, or anything that looks like one. They also don't like them ( or coyotes ) digging burrows in the sides of their field ditches, either. One guy was ditching in the spring and un-earthed a coyote den, and it had about forty deer skeletons in it. Most were pretty tiny, as you might have guessed.
That's exactly the same situation here but way bigger levees. We also have the beaver issues here. Nothing like having to dig a dam out of a 4-6' diameter culvert in a drainage canal by hand while inside the culvert! From what I've been told by the old timers when badgers move in to an area the woodchucks move out!
Probably not a very negotiable situation for the Chucks!
nicholasjohn
Well-Known Member
I feel for you, Man. All the while you're digging out the dam, the beavers are already working to put it back together. They probably don't even wait for you to leave, do they ? I think that's probably true about the badgers running the woodchucks out. They just have a really mean disposition, and a woodchuck is a pretty docile animal. It's probably about like how the foxes go away when the coyotes show up on the scene. They either scare them away or they eat them.
The only time I ever even heard of a woodchuck in the 25 years I hunted deer up there with those guys was when my buddy had one set up camp in one of his grain bins. It was making an awful mess, digging up the foundation. He was telling me about it over coffee as I was getting ready to leave after one of our annual deer hunts. He had tried the Havahart trap, with no luck. He asked me how to get it out of there, and told him I only know of one way to deal with a woodchuck. So, he came back with the 22, ready to go. I told him that he had better shoot him in the head, or it would go back in the hole and die in there. Then the grain bin is going to stink like a rotting carcass. If you want him dead right now, so you can get rid of the carcass, something a little bigger might be advisable. He also had one of those short-legged beach chairs, and was all ready to wait this one out. I asked him if he had some free time, because this one isn't going to be seen again until about April. The look on his face was priceless. He said "April ??? I'll be frozen stiff as a board by then." ( It was mid-November when we were having the conversation about it.)
So, he made a plan to park himself in the empty grain bin, and wait for as long as it took to let the air out of that little digger that was causing so much trouble. I had told him how they like apples, and he called me up in late March and said that the ones he had left out had been munched on. Time for our hunt. I asked him what weapon he had chosen, and he said that he was going to use …...… his slug gun. "WHAT ??? For a ten-pound rodent ? Don't you have something a little smaller ?" "Geez," he said. "There's just no pleasing you, is there. I told you I have a 22." Well, I guess that he had never read Goldilocks and the three bears as a kid, and had no concept of "just right." I also asked him if he had some ear plugs, since when you shoot that big gun inside a grain bin you aren't going to be able to hear anything for about a week. He said that would be OK, since his wife was getting kinda cranky from being stuck inside with him all winter, and maybe if he got a little relief from her constant badgering it would be good for him. "Shucks," he said. "Why do you think I've been looking forward to going out and sitting in my grain bin so much ? She's been downright hostile for about a month already."
So, he went out and did the job on Mr. Woodchuck, which didn't take as long as we had thought it would. One thermos of coffee was enough to get the job done. His buddy's 22 magnum was the perfect tool for the job, and all was well in the end. He sent me a picture, and I responded "Yup. That's a woodchuck, all right. Nice job." It was about twice as big as any I had ever seen before, so I guess life in the grain bin had been good to him. My buddy did have to move the grain bin, but he had kinda wanted to do that anyway. He now knows everything he had ever wanted to know about woodchucks, and the boys down at the grain elevator are still talking about it at their morning coffee breaks, when all the farmers show up to reconnoiter for a bit. Those guys are a bunch of characters anyway, and stuff like this gives them something to mull over in their slack time.
460 magnum
Well-Known Member
I laughed way to hard when you said he was going to use a slug gun, and there was no pleasing you. LOL
nicholasjohn
Well-Known Member
With a handle like 460 magnum I would think that would be right up your alley. Those "Up-North" Scandihoovians usually pull out the biggest hammer in their tool box - no point in playin' around with inadequate tools. I think that tendency probably saves them a lot of walking back to the truck for the one they should have grabbed right outa the chute.
460 magnum
Well-Known Member
I have been known to take a slug gun coyote hunting a time or 2, also shot my fair share of coon with big rifles.
