Really want to hear about it?  It's a sad story.  For close to 20 yrs it was my passion, because I was living in an area of upstate NY with lots of small family dairy farms (not the industrial farms that now predominate), & where permission to hunt was not difficult to obtain. Furthermore, the land & climate obviously suited them, because they were prolific--it was a daily (& sickening) sight to see one run over in the road.

Then two disasters occurred: real estate speculators began offering the farmers deals they couldn't refuse, so vacation homes replaced the cows, and at about the same time the eastern coyote invasion began. Even smart farm dogs have little trouble catching them, so a pair of coyotes working together were absolutely lethal.  So the woodchuck population crashed, and where some escaped the coyotes by moving into subdivisions, they couldn't be hunted.  So ended my chuck hunting career.

By the way, I always hunted them with a very heavy Peterson-barreled Stevens 49 in .22LR using cross sticks & an optical rangefinder, & never took a shot under 50 yrds, mostly in the 75-80 range, and even that far necessitated some careful stalking.  The challenge of hitting them at hundreds of yds with CFs eludes me completely.  Once, just to see if I could do it, I stalked one to about 20 yds & killed it with a K22, one shot to the brain.

Redsetter is right. The coyotes eat them as fast as they grow. The survivors live in the suburbs or very near some farmhouse and along the interstate highways. Not much chuck hunting in these parts anymore.

Maybe somebody needs to start thinning out the coyotes.

BP wrote on Jun 16^th, 2018 at 3:50am:

Good luck! I have been told they do not respond to predator calls west of the Cascades. 

Joe,

Maybe its because of all the ethanol that they put in the mogas.

westerner wrote on Jun 16^th, 2018 at 3:29pm:


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.

BP wrote on Jun 16^th, 2018 at 4:40pm:


Another situation in which close study of a situation by reliable observers is utterly dismissed by the "professionals" in ag & wildlife agencies; with them, nothing can be known or even surmised unless millions have been spent in "studies."  

westerner wrote on Jun 16^th, 2018 at 4:30pm:


So far as I know, the "poison everything you dislike" mentality that's rampant in the West is very uncommon in the East; not that there aren't individual psychopaths who may do it, but it's not a "way of life."

Redsetter wrote on Jun 16^th, 2018 at 5:28pm:

In this western State, private individuals are prohibited from using poisons for wild animal control, the State reserves that to itself.

I don't know which ones specifically, but I heard about using poison grain when I was a kid on the farm.

Of course, DDT was still in common use along with asbestos 

westerner wrote on Jun 16^th, 2018 at 9:51pm:

Big clean farms with quarter section fields and the end of the family farm are probably the biggest issues.

Schuetzenmiester wrote on Jun 16^th, 2018 at 10:22pm:


Exactly.  Used to be possible to make a decent living with a few dozen dairy cows, now it requires hundreds.  An industrial diary near me operates out of a "barn" the size of a B52 hanger.

Stopped in a gun store in Carrington, ND on the recent road trip back east to visit Fly-Over Country.
They had a batch of "Farmer's Commerative Edition" AR-15's in one rack.
Should come in handy on the farmer's walls for Woodchucks, Jackrabbits, and other varmits.   

westerner wrote on Jun 17^th, 2018 at 1:50am:

Where'd you shoot it at, Joe?
I heard the easterner's pretty much poisoned off most of the woodchucks back in that part of the country. They got a bunch of rock walls back there to, build from the rocks they pile up after picking them up out of the fields they farm on a lot of stony ground.   

All over the place in the New England States...
      

We had an old Rhode Island Red hen that was a good setter.
Dad got a call from the Game bird hatchery to come and get the pheasant eggs that he put his name on the list for.
That night, we went out and snuck those eggs in under her.
Couple of days later, they hatched, and that hen was just happy as could be.
Lasted about two weeks... those pheasant chicks were a wild bunch and on the run from the get-go. By the end of the month, they had all headed off to parts unknown.
She did better with mallard duck eggs, until the ducklings got old enough and found the pond. That old saying about "madder than a wet hen" is true.   

There's rock chucks up in the Okanogan north of Wenatchee, but the locals call them "greasers".

Bob,
Back in my younger days in the midwest, hunting didn't start until there was snow on the ground.
You'd look for tracks and the tail skid in the snow and follow them up to a tall grass patch, then flush them out.
They didn't hibernate, but now and then when a snowstorm was brewin', you could see where they would intentionally fly straight into a snowbank, part of which would collapse in behind them mostly sealing up the hole in the snowbank, and leaving them snug and relatively warm in their snow cave.
If you watched for it, sometimes you could see the tips of their tails sticking out of the snowbank, so you'd set your shotgun down, and do a belly flop on top of the hole, stick your arms in the snow and start grabbing to get ahold of some part of them, then just ring their neck, and you saved a shotshell for the next bird to fly.
China roosters were fun!

westerner wrote on Jun 17^th, 2018 at 2:34am:

So that is what started global warming.  Those circles!

BP wrote on Jun 17^th, 2018 at 2:04am:


Where they haven't been torn down to make way for subdivisions (in which case, the stones are sold to landscapers to create "instant" 200 yr old fences for the rich who come up from the city to build million-dollar "2nd homes"--or 3rd or 4th), they're highways for all the small mammals in the vicinity, which either run on top of them, or like foxes & coyotes, trot along beside them.  Where they border open pastures, the brush wood that grows up beside them provides the only shade & cover around for someone hunting woodchucks, as I once did.  Any chuck I killed was always placed on top of the nearest wall, or preferably at an intersection of two, and would usually have been carried off by the next day.

Isn't that a bear gun? Good job on the 'chucks, anyway.

JS47 wrote on Jun 17^th, 2018 at 6:21pm:


Excellent! I've eaten the meat, though some one else did the cooking, so I can't explain the preparation.  And why would woodchuck be any less palatable than squirrel, another rodent?

Redsetter wrote on Jun 17^th, 2018 at 6:31pm:


Maybe because they're 15 times tougher.

Tree Squirrels are very good eating. ground Squirrels on the other hand are well known for carrying various unhealthy to human diseases out this way. Those we shot by the hundreds always having an unlimited supply that a local cattle rancher in the hill country wanted eliminated. There uncontrollable population in turn attracted a very large on the ranch community of Coyotes. It was a real nice and private hunting paradise while it lasted and for about six years. Doves we're also very plentiful at the time with daily limits easy to achieve and there were always a few local Deer hanging out at the place. 

JLouis

Amen Bob Z and there were so many I would take my reloading equipment and set it up in the horse barn / shop for the after lunch time shoot. We would head up that way every weekend from about March to September when Dove season would then start. It would then typicaly give the young enough time to reproduce and fatten up for the next years shoot. Was not unusual to go through 200 rounds each for the two of us or real close it for every one day outing and more than enough until the next weekend came around. Man those were indeed the good old days when looking back. 

JLouis

I'm thinking the ones who prefer squirrel are likely better shots, and may not fill the game with bb's when an opportunity presents itself.   

westerner wrote on Jun 19^th, 2018 at 12:37am:


Not sure I want one that eats squirrel sitting in my lap. 




                        Joe. 
You probably wouldn't mind one who's feeling a little squirrelly sitting on your lap!

JS

For an old-timey photo from back in the days when folks weren't used to smiling in them, that feller almost looks like he's cracking a grin.   

Bob Z I always woke up with a good reasons to have a smile on my face, still alive, always having an enjoyable job to head to and being extremely blessed and thankful.

Bob,
Maybe that feller's squirrel eatin' gal has a way of keeping him in a good mood!    

Here is my grandson with his first kill ever. Remington no.4 22lr iron sights. This was the first of 5 that day

mijo,
Congratulations to you and your grandson, and that Rem #4!