Home Forums Birds & Dogs Turkey Hunting Forest Service letting the woods go to heck....

Anybody else hunt Forest Service land and notice that they've slacked off on preserving open grasslands in your area? I did some extensive brush-busting Saturday morning in area's that in previous years had a good mix of open grasslands. Now, I had problems recognizing some trails that I have used in previous years due to the growth of underbrush. It's a damn shame, and my area will be dropping spring turkey season from four weeks to three weeks next year due to "declining turkey numbers". Well, there's no habitat for them to survive when the woods are all choked up with underbrush!

The regional Forest Service head honcho had a local open house meeting last year and the FS guys got an earful from a room of about 40 local people. I pointed out the out-of-control cedar thickets that kill off nearly all wildlife and suggested that they get out the bulldozers, their limited controlled burns are ineffective.

My blame may be misplaced, but the damage/neglect happened over the last eight years.

The WMA I hunt has been growing up a lot in recent years, but turkey numbers are up enough that they opened a week-long Fall season. Hell, the neighbors in my subdivision report turkeys walking through their yards.

Where ya talkin' about, GH?

I'm ashamed to type the words, but it's the Caddo National Grasslands, the red-headed stepchild of the Forest Service. Ugh......that place is a train-wreck in so many ways.

The Forest Service manages the Mark Twain National Forest here in the Missouri Ozarks. It's a bit over 1.5 million acres of Ozark mountain timber and about all the Forest Service does is log it off on a rotational basis. There are a lot of clear cuts and overgrown brushy areas leftover from the logging. We are fighting an infestation of wild/feral hogs and the management of the forest makes perfect habitat for the damned things. The terrain is too rugged, remote and the overgrown clear cut remnants provide secluded protection from hunters and the hogs are thriving. Now hogs are very common in the Ozarks, and they are tearing up the habitat and competing directly with deer and turkeys. Forest Service is making lots of money from timber sales. A percentage of that timber sale money is supposed to go to the rural school districts but go talk to administration from those schools and it seems money due them barely trickles in and that's intermittent at best. I've had a couple dealings with the few federal Forest Service Ranger law enforcement types that operate in the MTNF and they were unimpressive to say the least.

"Over the last eight year"...... Man hasn't every government agency went to hell over the last eight years?

It costs tax dollars to do all that. Your choice, keep up lands or house/feed and give medical care to Muslim refugees and illegal aliens.

How much is a tag for those refugees you're talking about? Hell, if the FS would take a portion of the money they get from timber sales and reinvest it into managing the various areas there'd be a lot less grumbling about them raping the landscape. A few controlled burns, some food plots, savannah and glade management, better timber management... give us something back other than brush and sawdust.