Another major issue is due prices are non existent so every coon opossum and coyote ravage every nest the come across. David
well in a balanced environment all things level out, I have NO shortage of coons and skunks and foxes, yotes and such here, yet have a TON of all wildlife, minus NOW grouse and woodcock(used to have tons of them too)
any place that is having larger issue's with coons and foxes and such, will only last so long, a once the abundance of food ends, so do the numbers of predators, as without food, they cannot survive!
the bigger issue I think is when I hear folks complain(and not saying you are)
' is its just due to folks start to see a coyotes and predators more often near home and such, and they automatically THINK< there are LOTS of them all over
when the fact typically is, there isn;t any more of them, your seeing them more due to there having to come into towns and cities more to find food, as natural foods ain;t there like they once were
then add into the fact how much land every yr is lost to development!
people move into where things are, see them more and then complain! making ti seem like there are way more of them than maybe there really is!
if we can be honest, wildlife has learned to adapt to humans WAY better than humans have learned to adapt to them
just look at the diets of wildlife and how its changed over the yrs! and how they learned that where humans are there is MORE food, designer landscaping is like salad bars to a lot of wild critters
Deer, one of the biggest targeted hunted critter out there, was a browser by nature
and NOW< decades of food plotters , and HOW poorly forest have been managed for have good steady reliable browse ALL YR,
and the majority of deer now, shrive off grazing over browsing!
total change in how they survive
as I said, wildlife has adapted better to us than we do to them!
another big problem is loosing so many hunters and trappers
our numbers are at an all time low, and when huntable game disappears I don;t blame numbers of hunters to drop as well
PA was ONCE a top 5 pheasant state, and now we have basically ZERO wild pheasants, that's a BIG difference! and why I say game depts really need to step up there game and react quicker to issues NOT try and solve things After things are too far gone, which seems to be the way they work 99% of the time, , lots of room for improvement in there jobs IMO!
