Regarding woodchuck hunting in my area - northern NJ and lower NY State: 1) many dairy farms are now gone, and with them cultivated pastureland; 2) farmers are now growing corn, not alfalfa; 3) coyotes; 4) after 9/11, even more folks wanted to be far from NYC, and farmland and woods became housing developments. In addition to all that, a friend told me that he called NYSDEC regarding the woodchuck "drought" in NY State. They told him there had been an outbreak of hepatitis in the woodchuck population. This was about 10 years ago.
I have a bunch of woodchuck rifles and nothing to use them on. I started to notice coyotes in woodchuck fields in the late 1990s. Now we have them in all 21 counties of NJ.
