population control poll

[trapper_carl123]

how many people have noticed a rise in small game after you have trapped a area?

[redwinger00]

Is that pill or poll......Oh! Sorry, my fault.....I read it wrong.

:D

[Dave Lyons]

TC,

In my area I trap. I have noticed a great small game pop. since I started trapping. Mainly in the pheasants and rabbits. When I first started trapping in these location I had zero pheasants in the area. Since my trapping and one pheasant release the pheasant #'s have increased. Now there is nothing I can do about the birds of prey but the furbearers I can. Now guys can come hunt WILD birds in this area and have anywhere from 15-30 flushes in a day. And for the rabbits all the rabbit hunters on these farms are loving the dog running on multiple rabbits a day. You can come close with three guys to remove your limit if the guy running the gun can hit anything. Also in the area of DEER in noticed several fawns this year and in years past none to nill. The coyotes have been killing fawns as they come out of the mother.

Dave Lyons

[Mallard]

When I trap around the nesting habitat for waterfowl, I see a drastic increase in the brood count, even though my efforts are well before breeding season. Coons, opossums, and skunks are all major players in the nest raiding game. When I first started out trapping, it was with the ducks in mind, as I had seen what I beleived to be a definate decrease in resedent duck numbers, and I also beleive that some of the refuges with flooded corn has actualy changed the routes of some of the migrating ducks, so I'm left with local ducks being the majority of my harvest. Without local ducks, there just isn't as many duck s around. Delta waterfowl has done extensive studies on the subject, and have deemed predation control as one of the most important roles in successful nesting success.

When fur prices went into the basement, the trappers started to quit trapping, and the duck, grouse, pheasants...etc, numbers fell sharply (regionaly) due to the unbalanced increase in predator numbers. Many trappers this day and age aren't in the game for the money, obviously, and helping control the balance is becoming one of the major reasons some trap. It's also fairly obvious what the out of control coyote numbers are doing to population of their prey, as Dave has pointed out.

[rabbit whacker]

Its not trapping, but I notice a large increase in the areas that I rabbit hunt. We have two pieces of property that we hunt.

The first property, we hunt less and less due to development around it. We use to take 20 rabbits off it in a year. Every year the population would rebound heavily. The property is 16 acres in size and only about 10 acres of rabbit habitat.

The second area we hunt is on our tree farm that is 80 acres. It has about 8 acres of rabbit habitat plus misc. fence lines. We routinely have taken 50 rabbits off it a year.