Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Where's all the bugs?

I hope you see lots of them really soon.

Do you think that's because we're not managing forests correctly? Not allowing enough disruption to create the undergrowth needed for renewal/small critters etc. I'm thinking along the lines of the videos Ruffed Grouse Society puts out. Was that woods trail super mature woods?

We just had the coldest spring on record at the Airport in Seattle.
It never got up to room temperature.

I miss the many Monarch butterflies I would see as a kid during their migration. I know a lot of it is due to herbicides and loss of milkweed, but I hope they are making a bit of a comeback. Starting to see more of them each year.

Yep, same up here !

This was washed clean, on Sunday !

.this. aerodynamics makes a lot of difference

Ain't that the truth. No washing fluid squirters and upside-down wipers, too.

Have noticed it hunting sometimes.
The woods are dead.
Some crows, a hawk on occasion. Not much else moving.
Might see a dozen small birds in a day.

Indiscriminate and irresponsible use of pesticides and herbicides. Killing native weeds in favor of imported grasses and lush, weedless lawns and yet we wonder why we don’t have the pollinators of years past? The only herbicide I’ll use extremely sparingly for weed control in the gravel drive is glyphosate and that is for spot treatment not wholesale broadcast. Insecticides are something I avoid, especially chemical pesticides. I’ve used BT for specific applications during tent caterpillar infestation years but that’s only been needed once in the 10 years we’ve been here. I embrace the dandelions and other native “weeds”, most of which are edible in some form or fashion. The blackberries and salmon berries have their place in our landscape as well. I decided long ago that I wasn’t going to “fight” native weeds and use poisons to go to war with nature.

If you kill the primary food source of beneficial insects and spray pesticides in your attempt to kill the “bad bugs” don’t be surprised when you don’t have anymore beneficial insects either.

You sure about that comment? Many plants have been here so long and are so ubiquitous that we often mistake them for being native.

PS- The definition of a weed is just a plant (species) growing where we don't what it to grow...

Herbicides, Insecticides, Fungicides, Rodenticides, Nematicides, Avicides, etc are all PESTICIDES!

Colodog: It is the start of "bug season" here in much of Montana.
My Varminting friend just drove here from the west coast and his car was covered in them - he followed the Clark Fork River for about 125 miles to get here.
Washin'em off before they get baked on helps.
I live on a small elevated plateau that gets a fair amount of wind and to date (25 years now) I have NOT been bit by a mosquito in my home or in my yard, where I spend a LOT of time.
Flies do NOT like windy places either - I have discovered.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

We have bugs, field scouting for weeds this morning and discover this.

That is our spring wheat field on the left, neighbor's mustard on the right.





They must really like the mustard, I'd say half of the field is gone.

BINGO!

That's why we have almost no bugs anymore here. We are in the worst drought in 1,200 years and have little to no bug hatch. The sagehen, chuckar, and quail numbers are dismal, partly because the grasshoppers are what keeps them alive through the summers.

Our local claim to fame with the EPA is that we have sixty different species of mosquitoes.

Lately, the deer flies have been more if a problem.

No skeeters on my front porch, very few bugs of any description, hottest/driest spring I can recall.

Four out of five young lost in my martins, local mockingbirds have raised only one young all year. Ain’t seen any fledged Western kingbirds or scissortails.

We live in a heavy farming area. Lightning bugs are a thing of the past here. Crop dusters and spray rigs take care of them just like the other insects.

Well, I got about 7000 in my bed yard.
Plenty grasshoppers, crickets, etc, etc...to mess up a windshield!

This year on the west side of MT, the bugs have either drownded or froze. First mosquitoes DID attack me after sunset last night. But they are definitely the first of the year.
Last year the hoppers wasted much of eastern Montana, it was just insane how thick they were. My truck stunk SO bad and was so filthy I had to get some icky old towels and "sop" the front end of the truck to re-hydrate the bug cooze. Yech.
So no, I haven't really noticed much of a decline.