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Turkeys and the critters who eat them

Wild turkeys are one of Pennsylvania’s great conservation success stories. When I was a kid, wild turkeys were like a fable, a mythical animal inhabiting far distant wild lands, that could be seen and maybe heard if you were one of the lucky few. They had been decimated by market hunting in the 1800s and early 1900s. When I took my hunter safety education course at the age of ten at the old Army Reserve building out in the farmland on the east side of State College, the Pennsylvania Game Commission staff proudly showed us films of their successful trap-and-transfer program, where wild turkeys were lured with bait into the range of nets, caught, and then driven to the far reaches of Pennsylvania’s rural areas. Usually State Game Lands with fields.

From the 1970s until the early 2000s, Pennsylvania’s wild turkey population grew and grew, until they seemed to be everywhere, including well south of I-81, the old imaginary dividing line between concrete civilization and wild man country. Apparently turkeys are adaptable to concrete wilderness, because they took up urban residence all over the east coast. Not content with being colorful freeloaders along with the ubiquitous and nasty pigeons and rats in these urban areas from Massachusetts to New Jersey, wild turkeys also provide much hilarity as they attack everything that moves in a display of misguided dominance, including mailmen, soccer moms and their kids, and dogs being walked. Look up the “incident reports” of wild turkey muggings of disbelieving urbanites; lots of funny videos to go along with them, too.

So when turkey populations began to decline in Pennsylvania and parts of New York starting ten years ago, people knew it was not due to the birds’ lack of tenacity. Something new and powerful in the old bird + habitat equation was having an effect.

And in fact in many places here in PA, formerly huge turkey populations are now really low or non-existent. I myself used to look out my windows and watch three separate flocks cycle through our clover-planted yards. When I hunted spring turkeys there (northcentral PA), I would start the day surrounded by gobbling toms, and usually had a couple different opportunities to harvest one within the first few days of the hunting season. It was exciting and fun and a great way to begin the work day, although I will say that by the end of May, I was a hollow shell of a human, having run myself ragged either chasing toms myself, or calling for friends who had not yet filled a tag.

Bottom line is, those old flocks of twenty to thirty birds no longer exist. We are fortunate to see one or two wild turkeys at all on our place. And we have excellent habitat with grouse.

What caused the loss of wild turkeys in PA has generated a discussion similar to the one surrounding the demise of the once amazing world famous smallmouth bass fishery in the lower Susquehanna River. It seems that almost everyone involved has a reasonable opinion about it, and the official experts are being second-guessed by people who have witnessed circumstances different than those described by said experts. The ubiquitous use of trail cameras since 2000 has accompanied this growth in sportsman observational opinion, and very often individual hunters will use their cameras’ footage to make very compelling arguments that contradict official wildlife managers’ narratives.

Something similar happens in the aquatic environment, when thousands of fishermen experience and see something different than what they are being told through official government channels.

So now PGC is toying with the idea of releasing martens into the wilds of Pennsylvania. Similar to the fisher that was released back in the 1990s, martens are a furry little weasel-type animal that, like all weasel type animals everywhere, has an insatiable appetite for everything they can catch and kill. Not necessarily kill and eat. All members of the weasel family (wolverines, fishers, martens, mink, otters, weasels) have periods where they become “surplus killers.” That is, they will kill many more animals than they can eat, just because they seem to enjoy the hunt and the kill. Question being now, What will the new marten do to our turkeys?

Will martens do more of what fishers have so clearly done to PA turkey populations, which is to climb up into trees and eat them while they are roosted and asleep? Will martens only eat turkey eggs? Who knows? And so it follows, why release martens into our forests and farms if we don’t know what impacts they will have?

The question I have, and which I know so many other sportsmen have, is: What kind of studies have been done to date that provide confidence that reintroducing marten will have a net-benefit result, and not a net-negative/cost result?

Most of us agree with government biologists that biodiversity in general is important, and we agree that increasing biodiversity is a worthy goal. But, what are the costs and benefits of doing so? What costs and benefits do marten bring to our forests? I can imagine quite a few costs, mostly impacts on ground nesting birds (like wild turkeys, grouse, pheasant, woodcock, and a zillion species of cute little migratory dickie birds) that are already under tremendous pressure from overpopulating (thanks to urban sprawl) raccoons, skunks, possums, feral cats etc., and I wonder if the benefit of a few hundred citizens annually catching a view of one of these cute and elusive furry weasel-like animals is worth the inevitable costs.

One of the things we must struggle with today is that, as much as we would like to return to the pristine conditions of three hundred or four hundred years ago, where humans had a measurable but relatively minor impact on the environment, the reality on the ground today is totally different. The social carrying capacity among different human groups is one consideration. The carrying capacity of other wildlife is another consideration. I imagine that before people go petitioning or pushing to have these newest predators released back into our forests, we should know what their likely impacts are going to be first. I am willing to sign a petition to have PGC thoroughly study this subject, but I would feel irresponsible to ask the agency to jump before knowing what lies ahead and below.

I will say that I like knowing fishers are in our forests, but I do not like the tremendous impacts they have had on squirrels, rabbits, and turkeys. Everywhere a fisher takes up residence, the small game and turkey populations drop dramatically. Personally, I would prefer to know that there were a few hundred fishers living across Pennsylvania, instead of the thousands we now have that are over-impacting a lot of other equally valuable wildlife (and I enjoy recreationally trapping for fisher every year).

I am not saying that adding martens to Pennsylvania will necessarily be pouring fuel on the fire burning up wild turkey populations, but we really should know. That is the responsible thing to do.

 

Somebody Primary RINO US Sen. Pat Toomey

Few personality types bother guys more than weak, weasely, whiny men, and US Senator Pat Toomey is all that in spades, and much more, or less. It stinks to have an elected “leader” like Toomey demonstrate so little leadership quality, and even worse, to publicly flout his less-than-manly characteristics. Always appearing in public with some kind of fakey senatorial bearing, Toomey’s speech is similarly a fake serious tone, a kind of deeply thoughtful grasshopper. What a show. He reminds us very much of another phony RINO, congressman Charlie Dent, now thankfully gone from public life where he also did so much damage to the American people.

Pat Toomey is one of the great RINOs of today’s Republican Party. For the uninitiated, RINO means “Republican In Name Only,” which really translates into a liberal. Not a conservative. In it for the money. Not committed to freedom or liberty or the US Constitution.

Toomey exhibits weak-kneed indecision and back-stabbing liberalism traits pretty much every day on the job. He does not have the president’s back, but much like another RINO senator, Mittens Romney, Toomey seeks to falsely burnish his credentials by actually blocking, damaging, or criticizing the one person who is trying to right the American ship, President Trump. As if Toomey is so, so thoughtful and carefully considerate.

Toomey has been a real go-getter on disarming law abiding citizens, hatching one gun-grabbing scheme after another, always punishing the law-abiding and never, ever being tough on actual crime and real criminals. The other day he was one of a few US Senate RINOs to vote with the anti-America Democrats against the president’s border emergency wall, as if there is no border crisis, no illegal invasion crisis.  Toomey might as well join AOC down at the border handing out taxpayer-funded sombreros and bottled water to illegals on their way into the taxpayer funded haven of America.

And on this new Trump-Ukraine phone call fake scandal, where a rogue spy within the American defense system filed a fake “whistleblower complaint,” Toomey says the President’s phone call may have been “inappropriate,” but not impeachable. Since when was the effort by the US President to bring to justice a treasonous and corrupt American, Joe Biden, inappropriate? America and Ukraine have an anti-corruption treaty that the president was implementing, as is his job. Toomey should have pointed to admittedly corrupt Joe Biden as the subject of this scandal. Biden used his previous Vice President position to blackmail Ukraine and to enrich his family.

Is Toomey against bringing Biden to justice?

Even worse, several US senators from the Democrat Party actually visited the Ukraine and wrote a letter, directly threatening Ukraine leaders, saying they would vote to withhold promised US defense funds if the Ukraine actually DID investigate Joe Biden’s son. How is that for hypocritical and bald-faced lying irony?

And yet, where is Pat Toomey on all of this? He says nothing about his senate colleagues blackmailing Ukraine and is ho-hum about the US President just doing his duty as president.

Like just about every other Washington, DC political hack, spineless career politician Pat Toomey remains purposefully and deeply insulated from reality, and yet he has so much negative impact on the real lives the rest of us lead. If there is one solid RINO candidate for a strong primary opponent, it is Pat Toomey. The guy has no fight in him, not for us, and it would be easy for a good primary opponent to simply tick off the laundry list of assaults Toomey has led against citizen rights and needs over the years he has inhabited this seat. Someone please primary this bad guy. You will get a lot of support from real Republicans. That is, patriots and conservatives.

Chief Weasel and RINO king, Pat Toomey, begging for a primary opponent

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Snow is magic, pretty, enchanting, a pain to drive in, a pain to shovel, and a huge boon to hunters.

Snow helps hunters (animals and humans alike) see prey better, because it creates stark contrasts. When a prey animal is moving, a hunter can much more quickly spot it.  Tracks reveal where animals have been, and where they might be again.

Today was the last day to harvest a bobcat, and while I did not try to bag one real hard, I still feel a little disappointed. Our traps went out after the bobcat trapping season, and I did not get up to our northcentral PA honeyhole spot, so I can’t say I tried hard. But still, if you read enough hunting reports, you know that all it takes is that “one amazing moment” when the cat silently appears after you’ve been calling. I had hoped for that moment.

Kind of like that other hopey-changey stuff, my own hope was misplaced.

But I did take a lot of pretty photos with snowy backdrops. The white barn, dune-like ripples in the snow across a big field, dead foxtail grass waving in the deep snow…kind of like grass waving in the dunes at the sea shore. An old loop of barbed wire sticking up through the snow, with rabbit tracks hopping by on the right. Ice sheets across the stream, or nearly across, with deer tracks testing it up til its edge, and then backing away to find another route.

As I was snuck inside a field corner woods, blowing on the dying rabbit call, a giant snowy owl erupted from the other side of the hedgerow 150 yards away.  One swoop over me, and it lit out for Canada. Not even camo fools those eyes.  The last snowy owl I saw was 36 years ago, while I was out hunting alone in Centre County, walking along a field edge.  Raucous crows alerted me to something special about to happen, and then it appeared, a majestic white owl, soaring ahead of the cawing mass.  That owl just kept on going, leaving me mesmerized.

A black weasel came darting to the call inside a small wash, while I was perched on a stump and log way above.  My mind first identified it as a black squirrel, then as a mink, and then as the weasel it was, as I watched it crouched under a fallen log, watching me with glittery eyes.  I have a weasel mounted with the wood duck I shot with John Plowman nearly 20 years ago, out on the Susquehanna.  The weasel is from Centre County, and is brown with a black-tipped tail.  This is the first all-black weasel I have seen, although I have seen both an all-black fisher (in the ADKs in November) and a mink this year.  Kind of like a three-of-a kind poker hand; the fourth must be a seal…

Nature is so simply magical.  How people do drugs, I do not understand.  The sun on the snow today was enough of a “drug” for me to last all day and night and into tomorrow.  And so yet another hunt passed, without a kill, and yet, so fulfilling, nonetheless.

Harrisburg’s new parking scam

Today I parked in a Harrisburg municipal garage. Got my ticket when I entered, and tried to pay when I returned four hours later.

Several poorly written, hand-written notes on lined paper were taped to the payment kiosk. These notes said that the kiosk was now taking only exact payment, that no refunds were being given, that inserting your credit card to pay could result in the permanent loss of your card, and that receipts slips were not printing.

kiosk 2

In other words, you might mistakenly over-pay, because few people carry exact cash for anything, the machine would not give you a receipt for proof that you had overpaid, and you’d get no change back.  What happens if you are in a rush to exit the garage and get on your way to your next destination?  You might just leave a few extra bucks behind to save the time…no doubt that’s part of the purpose.

And we are not talking about nickels and dimes, but dollars only. It cost sixteen bucks to park in the garage for the four hours I was up at the Capitol. That is four dollars an hour, or four quarters for fifteen minutes of parking time (as opposed to one quarter for ten or fifteen minutes like it was until last year). It is a huge amount of money for parking.

And on top of the rip-off parking price, you get zero service, theft of your change due back, and no receipt to prove you did indeed pay.

Harrisburg has some serious challenges, and this parking scam is going to make recovery worse. One of the ways the city is supposed to re-coup its bad debt on the incinerator is lease out the parking garages. Well, here ya go; here is the natural result of that leasing arrangement: All rip-off, no service, outrageous prices, no due process. Really hope the “geniuses” who thought this up are held accountable for this failure.

Wait a minute! The guys who ripped us all off with the incinerator debt never got held accountable, and now we have a whole new set of rip-off guys milking us in new ways. I guess it just doesn’t end, until every taxpayer will have moved from the city and abandoned the place to the crows and the weasels.