westerner wrote on Jun 16
th, 2018 at 3:29pm:
Why is it there used to be bazillions of Woodchucks for vermin shooters at the turn of the last century? No Coyote problem then. Coyotes migrated East?
Of course. Woodchucks evolved with wolves, which didn't bother with them, & foxes, which were too small to tackle anything larger than a half-grown one. Coyotes are to woodchucks, dim-witted to begin with, an alien invader against whom they have no natural defenses.
The other reason is the conversion of most of those small farms which provided pasture & thus food to support a large chuck population into subdivisions, trailer-parks, condos, etc.
Anybody with a cursory interest in chucks knows this, has observed in taking place with their own eyes over the last 40 yrs, anybody EXCEPT the know-nothing wildlife biologists working for most state conservation depts.--because no fact in nature can exist unless it's been "proven" by a mutimillion dollar, multi-year study, & few if any depts. would invest that kind of money & effort in such a "minor" species. One of NY's regional conservation offices in near here, & I've talked to their staff about this--about which nobody in that office knew ANYTHING, though hunters & farmers have been talking about it for yrs; hard to remember another group as ignorant & pig-headed as that bunch. Amazingly, though there's a closed season on coyote hunting (to which I don't object), there's none on woodchucks, nor bag limits! That might have made sense when there were "bazillions" of them, but then isn't now. Only state I know that treats them (rightly) as a game animal with seasons & limits is Pa.