Well......(sorry, long)
I personally think that the BOP around are a good sign (more birds have to be living off of something, right?). They get plenty of moles/voles, mice, etc. too - why don't we think this is something they should not kill - becuz we don't want to), and generally we white guys (said tongue in cheek), especially us Easterners I've noticed, have a tendency to wanna over-manage everything. In other words, we see a "problem" where there might not actually be one and we can then come up with a solution, which usually involves action from us, making us feel like we "did" something about said "problem"....any of that make sense? And I'm not just talking about this topic either.
Barry, I am also from PA, and (maybe this comes from me being "schooled" in the natural sciences) I think in PA we still have a heavy-handed attitude (I include myself in this statement also, regretfully) toward game animals, and animals in general, such that we should have everything JUST the way we want it, and nothing else shall interefere, or not be the way we don't want it. BIG Example: the whole Gary Alt/PGC deer herd management thing (I REALLY don't want to fire up this argument, just using it as an example) - for the benefit of you outta-staters, a few years ago the PA Game Commission started BOTH antler restrictions AND doe herd reductions across the state as seen to be needed by their biologists. MAJOR debate, especially amongst the older hunters, I've noticed. "How dare they kill off all the doe, don't they know that's where the buck come from?" was a usual statement, and anything with 3 inches of horn is something to brag about, but letting the buck live another year, and reducing the doe herd (WAY outta whack in most areas) and letting some food for future generation of deer and the bucks, is generally not considered to be good. Now, several years later, many more BIG buck are being seen and harvested in PA, and only blind people aren't noticing. But the herd reduction thru antlerless removal is not so popular, as many want to SEE deer, not necessarily MANAGE deer. Again, we want what we want, many deer to see, big bucks to shoot, no real hunting involved (more just chasing them around anyhow, for most of the state), and no considerationfor thefact that the deer have to live in weather like we're having now AND have food AND have cover to survive, while we're sitting in the warm bitching about it. Habitat improvemetnor lossinbiologists terms. There's a lot less sapling stage forest in the woods than there used to be in many areas, some from over-browwsing, some from not cutting the woods as hard as we used to - but it all winter food and cover loss, so less deer can, and should, exist in it, all else being equal.
But I digress.....I see this as a similar issue to "lower" small game populations here. We say nothing has changed, but in reality everything has changed. Point - when I was at home on the farm, in the seventies, we didn't have very good control of the weeds in the fields, although it was much better than in the 60's. Weedy fields have GREAT cover and food for small game, and regardless of the number of BOP, we had game cuz the BOP went hungry more since they couldn't find the small game as easily. Now, our fields are BARE in the winter, minus a bit of stubble, but not NEAR the cover for rabbits, etc. It looks like a damn carpeted living room around here anymore - what happened to all the foxtails I used to chase roosters and rabbits outta around here? No fence rows or over-grown farms either. Nothing goes to waste (farming economics and the continued increase in grain production per acre pushed this one), not near the spilled grain (better equipment = less food), better (more effective) sprays so less weeds, and fall tilliage (again economically-driven to get an early/cleaner spring start and get more acres in) have all reduced the cover on farm land. You also see few farms growing up anymore with land prices the way they are - they either still get farmed, or they are developed. Case in point - I can show you native birds some years around here (pheasants), but it has to be a wet year when the farmers can't mow out the ditches and wetlands and kill the habitat. AND I can show you a couple of BOP watching those areas intently for a meal, but if there is cover there, there's still plenty of game for hunt (unless everybody in town went thru these small patches already!) One farmer that runs a few thousand acres around here has a high-flotation combime and tractors that greatly reduce his soil compaction and help keep his crop production up - also allows him to DRIVE RIGHT THRU THE WETLANDS, and knock down the cover! Let your farmland get weedy and let briars grow up (and get your neighbors to do it too, cuz one farm isn't much in game terms, but you said you have 1500 acres around you), and you WILL have more game. This is how game farms preserve the birds they put out till the "hunters" come along (no slant on anybody, I hunt this way too to benefit my dog) by letting crops stand and making cover present - cover and birds pay their bills, grain is secondary (but at $4.50 a bushel and climbing, we'll see how that may change!)
I find a lot of my small game in the wooded areas now, where we can't reduce the cover - that's the habitat loss that's being discussed - its not just land lost to development, but changed subtlely such that there is little/no food/REAL cover value. Example - some of my grouse spots are dying out (cover is maturing) but I hit some new ones that are great this year, briary as a bugger to get thru tho! Salvage cut/gypsy moth killed areas, probably 5 - 10 years old now. Looks ugly, and that's what they need. Sorry for the OT stuff, and the long rant - this habitat thing gets under my skin when people can't seem to see it. Didn't mean to hijack your thread either.
