Is the Sky Falling?

[kobear]

It scares me to hear this. Do you believe it?

From North Dakota Game and Fish

ND Outdoors Magazine

http://www.gf.nd.gov/multimedia/ndoutdoors/issues/2008/jan/docs/2007-review.pdf

Many people have not experienced hunting in North Dakota under

anything but optimal circumstances, but this may be about to rapidly change.

Let’s use ring-necked pheasants as an example of how history is set up to repeat itself. A simplistic review would be this:

North Dakota, on average, had good pheasant populations in the 1940s through the early 1960s. The mid-1960s saw the end of the Soil Bank days (a program similar to CRP), the 1970s saw huge increases in farm commodity prices and advice from then U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butts for farmers to farm “fence row to fence row.”The late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s saw statewide pheasant harvest average range from 50,000-

75,000 (one-tenth of recent years’ harvest), including several years of closed seasons.We are currently set up to see a repeat of the same scenario.

A repeat! One tenth as many roosters harvested! Ouch!!

[brittman]

Grew up in ND during the late 70s early 80s. We shot birds, but saw much less. Opening day and opening day on the refuges was the only time you bumped into other hunters.

Be interesting to see how hard the PLOT lands get hit with loss of CRP.

Will remaining CRP get gobbled up by the outfitters to feed the commercial machine?

[lawdog]

Its not just ND, SD is going to lose something like 700 to 800 thousand acres of CRP in the next two years. MN will lose a ton too. I've been saying for two years now, that this is what will become the good old days for us...

[brittman]

Prime ND counties are losing about 25K - 60K acres each this year alone.

[kobear]

We hunt by Forman - Cogswell and one of the farm operations that lets us hunt turned over 12 quarter sections of CRP this fall. That's almost 2000 acres lost on one farm. Yes that is right where the Mt. Lion was shot, 4 mile SE Cogswell 110# Male.

[brittman]

Read Outdoor News, the amount of CRP being turned over in ND, SD, and MN is far exceeding initial expectations. Going faster than anyone thought possible.

The sky will be filled with smoke come spring. Maybe the snow geese will behave like its foggy....