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The eastern woodchuck is gone from the fields here in the Northeast USA!

The coyote which came here a few years ago has killed them off.

I really enjoyed woodchuck hunting and its gone. I have shot a few coyotes when I saw them. There was far far more shooting at the chucks.



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you got to get off your azz to shoot coyotes.

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Originally Posted by Savage_99
The eastern woodchuck is gone from the fields here in the Northeast USA!

The coyote which came here a few years ago has killed them off.

I really enjoyed woodchuck hunting and its gone. I have shot a few coyotes when I saw them. There was far far more shooting at the chucks.




the stupid flows freely from the OP


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Originally Posted by huntsman22
you got to get off your azz to shoot coyotes.


No kidding.

I guess we know the dominate predator in 99's neck of the woods.

Turn in the man card...

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but he did manage to kill some woodchucks and blame the coyotes...


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99, what 99 says is quite true in some areas.. I have hunted chucks on and off for many years, although I haven't done much in the last 12... When the coyotes came in, they nailed a lot of the chucks.. Killing coyotes in the brush and hay fields of the east is more difficult than it is killing them out west.. I know guys who hunt them with dogs like they used to hunt fox.. They do ok. But in a winter, the four or five guys who hunt together kill less coyotes than one hunter in good country out here..

The second big thing that has change the chuck population,is many of the old farms are growing up in brush.. Good chuck shooting demands good feed.. In the areas I am familiar with the old farms are becoming brush patches..


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we have always had coyotes, and have always had 'chucks.

it is pretty easy to shoot out a woodchuck colony, but casual varminting won't touch the coyote population.


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I'm in Maryland and for the years between 1975 and about 2000 I shot a lot of groundhogs. Now it is rare to even see one.

I hunt at least once a year in Wyoming and during the day there I would see at least a couple of coyotes. But back East it is rare to see them . They seem to have become mostly nocturnal.

About 5 years ago I was at a taxidermist's shop in Maryland right after hunting in Wyoming and I saw at the back of the shop what I thought was the body of someone's pet. When I mentioned that to the taxidermist he suggested I take a closer look. It was a female coyote that had been shot by a deer hunter. It was about 2 and half years old and weighed 53 pounds. The male coyotes in Wyoming average about 26-28 pounds and the females between 22 and 24 pounds. The dead coyote was the offspring of coyotes that had moved to the East via our Northern states and Southern Canada and had interbred with wolves. This was verified by DNA tests.

So now here in the East we have big coyotes who are mostly nocturnal. And here in Maryland we rarely see them during the day.

In addition to very few groundhogs here we also don't see many ground nesting birds. Pheasants are now almost non-existent.

I miss the pheasants and the groundhogs a lot and rarely even get to see a coyote.

Steve

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My believe it is pesticides and farming practices that killed off the Groundhogs in the East more than shooting and Coyotes even tho I'm sure Coyotes have helped.


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Originally Posted by 7x57STEVE
I'm in Maryland and for the years between 1975 and about 2000 I shot a lot of groundhogs. Now it is rare to even see one.

I hunt at least once a year in Wyoming and during the day there I would see at least a couple of coyotes. But back East it is rare to see them . They seem to have become mostly nocturnal.

About 5 years ago I was at a taxidermist's shop in Maryland right after hunting in Wyoming and I saw at the back of the shop what I thought was the body of someone's pet. When I mentioned that to the taxidermist he suggested I take a closer look. It was a female coyote that had been shot by a deer hunter. It was about 2 and half years old and weighed 53 pounds. The male coyotes in Wyoming average about 26-28 pounds and the females between 22 and 24 pounds. The dead coyote was the offspring of coyotes that had moved to the East via our Northern states and Southern Canada and had interbred with wolves. This was verified by DNA tests.

So now here in the East we have big coyotes who are mostly nocturnal. And here in Maryland we rarely see them during the day.

In addition to very few groundhogs here we also don't see many ground nesting birds. Pheasants are now almost non-existent.

I miss the pheasants and the groundhogs a lot and rarely even get to see a coyote.

Steve


Do you have a lot of turkeys?


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Sorry guys back East. It wasn't coyotes that decimated the woodchucks. It was me. I am ashamed of myself but in my defense I was young and bloodthirsty back then and the woodchucks were plentiful. I started at 11 with Dad's Winchester model 67, moved to a 22 magnum at 13 and a 6mm Remington at 18.

The toll I took on the Eastern woodchuck population was devastating.

Because nature abhors a vacuum, since 1981 when I moved out west, woodchucks from all the surrounding Eastern states have been moving in to my old stomping grounds. So great was the vacuum that to this day, woodchucks as far away as Virginia are making the trek to Northern New York to fill the vacancies. There is no telling how long it will take to replenish the empty woodchuck holes left in the wake of my carnage.

But seriously, when I was a kid growing up in Northern New York we had lots of coyotes and lots of woodchucks. Today that area is seeing far less chucks but I'm sure it has more to do with loss of habitat and changes in farming practices. Many farms have either grown up to brush or have been subdivided for urban development. The ground that is still farmed is farmed far more intensely and with more chemicals than when I was a kid. None of these things work in favor of woodchuck populations.


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When I started shooting chucks in N.E. PA. (1983) the places we hunted were a virtual golf course of chuck shooting small 50 -75 acre fields with woodlots between. hand laid stone walls around all the fields and poor farming practices. The would cut hay twice a year, never all the way to the stone walls and used little to no chemicals. Around 1993 they started selling stone walls for a profit to stone masons. The farm also started spraying for bugs and weeds. Less chucks was the result...... by a lot. Around 1997 the dairy farming came to an end as the older farmers retired and their son was busy mining flag stone. Farm grew up and chucks vanished into the undergrowth. I hear that a few years ago that the fracking took hold there and a few wells are on this farm...

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Steve,

What I've heard from more than one biologist is the decline in ground-nesting birds in the East is at least partially from a lack of ground cover in many areas, due to so many whitetails.


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Seeing more Groumdhogs than usual around here. Along with Cottontails.
Shooting SC this evening we could have shot at least 30 rabbits. Small open ground surrounded by grown up knee high fields. Few trees for the Hawks and Owls to perch and wait.

Have had GC biologists tell me Pa never had many wild Pheasants because we never had the right habitat. But they were yet to be born when we did and flushing 10 to 20 birds a day wasn't all that hard if you had good legs.

Forgot to add that we had many more Deer then than we have had in the last 10 plus years. You also could easily flush 25 Ruffed Grouse daily in the same area that the GC considered overpopulated with Deer. And that was normal for decades. Reason being, great Deer cover and Ruffed Grouse cover are basically the same. I.E. New growth forest.

When it comes to upland birds, trapping died out and with it the nest robber numbers increased. Then the glamour birds-Hawks/Owls- became untouchables. Coyotes moving in obviously didn't help, but not sure they hurt all that much either. Too many Deer eating up the ground cover? He/she must have skipped too many classes or is guessing. Over mature forests? Bet on it.

Addition: Another example of people only knowing what exists in their present and assuming it always was the same.

Last edited by battue; 06/20/16.

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shot 5 groundhogs yesterday afternoon here in maryland without really having to work at it. They must not have gotten the memo


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Battue,

This biologist was with the West Virginia game department, and seemed pretty confident of recent research. I did minimal Googling and came up with the following links, among a number of others.

The article in the first link contains this pertinent quote: "Ironically, management of ruffed grouse and deer habitat has traditionally been considered as a “hand-and-glove” situation,since cutting of aspen and other fast-growing trees is done for both species. Grouse flourish where there is a mix of maturetrees and three to ten acre areas with dense growths of new trees used for brood-rearing. Deer also benefit from that type of habitat. But where there are too many deer, the new growth is eliminated and a grassy ground cover poorly suited to grousedevelops. Snowshoe hares and cottontail rabbit populations can be limited in a similar way."

https://www.wc4eb.org/wp-content/articles/MWC-DeerImpactOtherWildlife_pt3.pdf

www.wisconsinbirds.org/deerherbivory.htm

Western biologists have documented the same effects from the overgrazing of elk on quaking aspen thickets, some of the prime ruffed grouse habitat out here.




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No doubt enough Deer could do so, but I've pretty much hung around those types of covers for longer than I want to admit. Also during times of some high Deer numbers in Pa. Times when you could easily see 30 Deer per day and 50 plus wasn't uncommon but have yet to see where they could extensively ruin thick Grouse nesting cover here in Pa.


Some examples:


This isn't a recent thick cut,but if lucky you could bump into 20 Deer around this spot if things went right and there is one in this pic. Some Grouse are usually close by and nest successfully.

[Linked Image]

Here happens to be two from right below the first pic.

[Linked Image]

Pa GC Biologists will tell you this area has too many Deer. I can tell you, it doesn't have even close to enough to eat the Grouse out of nesting cover.


[Linked Image]

The background of this pic is cover you have to fight your way thru. Deer may do it easily and they are in there. It would take more than I could imagine to wipe the nesting cover out.

[Linked Image]



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So the question is this for myself. Do I believe everything I read written by so called experts? Used to, not any more. Will admit too many Deer in a big semi mature wood can be hard on Grouse nesting cover, but in ideal regrowth cover Ive yet to see any have enough Deer to do so.

Back on subject. Cousin called me today and wanted a scope recommendation. What ya doing? Right now looking at 4 Groundhogs. You seeing many? Hell yes, I killed 15 last week. Get your azz up here before the cuts get too high.

Last edited by battue; 06/22/16.

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battue, I do not know about Pa. But I do know about this valley.. Since we got a biologist from Minn. in 2006 our deer and antelope herds have crashed.. While on the other side of the mountain, they prosper.. He is a mess.. Not a bad guy, either ignorant, or lazy as sin.. He by in large is responsible for the lack of deer and antelope in the upper Platte River Valley.. Most of these new ones only know what they have read in a book or have been told in class.. They are either too stupid or too lazy to look around the country and see what is happening.. It is sicking. We pay these bastards to sit on their ass.. I drive by this clowns house several times a week.. His game and fish truck is ALWAYS sitting in his drive way..


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In Pa you have little actual contact with the biologists. Game Wardens are readily available if you want to chat. Problem is they get fed the current doctrine of the year. Disagree and they will refer you to the current mandates they are force fed. Agree and all are happy. Lots of different groups other than hunters currently pull on the Pa GC's skirt.


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