Time Spent Afield...Today vs. "The Old Days"

[Bowsnbucks]

Native, post #18 - The biggest reason for pheasant decline, I believe, is the big reduction in habitat & farming practices here. The Pa. countryside used to have a larger amount of fallow, weedy fields & fencerows which provided great cover for the pheasants. Very few fencerows anymore - all cut for more productive acreage. An area near where I live now is called "Pheasant Run". Older natives here say they remember when "Pheasant Run" actually had many pheasants in it. Now it's solid housing development. The pre-school / after school where we took our sons when they were young had acres of weedy "waste land" as the developers call it across the road from it. Deer, pheasants, even turkeys called that area home. No more. Massive housing development. Houses so close you can fart and your neighbor can smell it. $$$300,000+ for "country living". ******

As I mentioned in my post at #8, farmers used to harvest their corn and it left bent stalks about 2' to 3' tall with lots of leafy duff in the rows. Loose corn was scattered in the field and made some easy pickings for pheasants and rabbits. Those cut corn fields made for good hunting. But today, corn fields are scalped clean down to 2" or 3" stubble and all the stalks & leaves are vacuumed up for chop / silage. You couldn't hide a tick in those fields now. Critters have to have cover & a place to live.

****** - To me, it's comical as hell when urban/ high density people decide they want to move "to the country". They want to "escape" crime, crowded conditions, traffic, etc. Then they buy into a housing development where the houses are 15 ft. apart, with acres of cookie-cutter houses in neat rows (for max profit), and there aren't any trees or much else left green when they move in. AND PAY $300,000 TO $450,000 for their piece of the "country". If they want green & trees - they have to buy it & have it installed. And if you look at the landscape from an elevated position, the whole place is just a relocated city !!! All the sh*t they wanted to escape is right there in the same cramped, traffic-filled neighborhood they just paid big $$$ to "escape". Here come the strip malls, burger joints, mini markets, etc. Humans are the smartest animals on the planet ............... right ???

Farmer Dan - We have longer seasons here too. But when it's as quiet as a tomb in the woods, no hunters, no vehicles, no shots - longer seasons aren't being used like they might have been in years past. Folks don't want to take another day or three and lose the pay for something they may not even see.

 

[Someday isle]

Great topic. I started hunting in the late 1970’s here in Missouri on public land. I was lucky and took a doe on an any deer day on my fourth day ever hunting. I was forever hooked. In those days in Missouri we had a successful season if somebody in our party even saw a deer. I think it was five years later when I finally harvested my second deer, and my first with a bow. Back when I was a teenager and and a young man in my early twenties I hunted hard and often. I just didn’t know what I was doing. Sometimes I didn’t see deer because they weren’t there. Other times I didn’t see deer because I did everything wrong. Then I really got into bird hunting. I had a German short haired pointer that was a way better dog than I was a shooter. We spent many days afield together. Then came family, small children, and going into business. The days afield dwindled. Now, new phase of life. Kids are older, a couple like to hunt a little, we bought some land and I have more time and less responsibility. I no longer have child rearing expenses, I’m no longer saving for college, and I’m almost no longer paying for college. My wife and I are building our future home and that takes time away from going out to the property but that’ll be done in June if we stay on schedule. Then I’ll be focused on getting out to the Island again.

I think thechnolgy and the the wealth of information we have at our disposal certainly impacts our time afield in ways that it didn’t in years past but it also makes us more efficient unless we screw it up. For me though, I think my own particular phase of life has had as much impact on my time as anything else. I feel like I once again spend as much time now as I did when I was young and had no real responsibilities. If only I still had that 20 year old body to go along with my 57 year old brain...

 

[Native Hunter]

Native, post #18 - The biggest reason for pheasant decline, I believe, is the big reduction in habitat & farming practices here. The Pa. countryside used to have a larger amount of fallow, weedy fields & fencerows which provided great cover for the pheasants. Very few fencerows anymore - all cut for more productive acreage. An area near where I live now is called "Pheasant Run". Older natives here say they remember when "Pheasant Run" actually had many pheasants in it. Now it's solid housing development. The pre-school / after school where we took our sons when they were young had acres of weedy "waste land" as the developers call it across the road from it. Deer, pheasants, even turkeys called that area home. No more. Massive housing development. Houses so close you can fart and your neighbor can smell it. $$$300,000+ for "country living". ******

As I mentioned in my post at #8, farmers used to harvest their corn and it left bent stalks about 2' to 3' tall with lots of leafy duff in the rows. Loose corn was scattered in the field and made some easy pickings for pheasants and rabbits. Those cut corn fields made for good hunting. But today, corn fields are scalped clean down to 2" or 3" stubble and all the stalks & leaves are vacuumed up for chop / silage. You couldn't hide a tick in those fields now. Critters have to have cover & a place to live.

****** - To me, it's comical as hell when urban/ high density people decide they want to move "to the country". They want to "escape" crime, crowded conditions, traffic, etc. Then they buy into a housing development where the houses are 15 ft. apart, with acres of cookie-cutter houses in neat rows (for max profit), and there aren't any trees or much else left green when they move in. AND PAY $300,000 TO $450,000 for their piece of the "country". If they want green & trees - they have to buy it & have it installed. And if you look at the landscape from an elevated position, the whole place is just a relocated city !!! All the sh*t they wanted to escape is right there in the same cramped, traffic-filled neighborhood they just paid big $$$ to "escape". Here come the strip malls, burger joints, mini markets, etc. Humans are the smartest animals on the planet ............... right ???

Farmer Dan - We have longer seasons here too. But when it's as quiet as a tomb in the woods, no hunters, no vehicles, no shots - longer seasons aren't being used like they might have been in years past. Folks don't want to take another day or three and lose the pay for something they may not even see.

That explains it well, and I assumed that loss of habitat had at least something to do with it. We see the same thing in this area - especially around the lakes.

 

[H20fwler]

OK, reading of guys experiences reminds me of one of my fondest from my childhood hunting with my Dad and Grandfather.

When I was really young rabbits were big game to me, when I first started going out with my Dad and Grandfather I wasn't allowed to carry a gun but did carry as many bunnies as I could in the back of my little canvas hunting coat (which was probably around three). I was designated dog for brush piles and old rolled fence piles as a jumper to flush anything hiding if we weren't hunting with beagles. I don't know if Ohio had a hunting age requirement back then but we normally were hunting our own ground anyway when my Grandpa came to hunt in the fall.
The first year I was allowed to hunt with a gun it was a toy army looking rifle with a wooden bullet in it attached to the bolt, if I was caught pointing it in an unsafe direction I wasn't allowed to carry it the rest of the day. When I was around eight or nine my Dad bought me a Crossman 177 and it was on! I carried that thing like it was a new Browning...loaded with a pellet and pumped up as many pumps as I could get, anything they shot that was crippled I got to shoot in the head.
One slow morning we were walking across a little thin trestle farm bridge and my Grandpa told me to hold up, he held up an old dry walnut that he had picked up and asked me if I thought I could hit it, I told him I thought so and my Dad just rolled his eyes. Grandpa tossed it down into the little slow moving creek below us and said shoot it....I used the railing as a rest clicked the safety off and started tracking it as it drifted down stream. It floated and I covered it with the big fat front blade on my pellet gun...I was nervous with both watching and hesitated to long, my Dad said it was to far away now and it was maybe twenty five yards from us and moving......I shot and that walnut splashed right out of the creek! My Grandpa slapped me on the back and called me Daniel Boone the rest of the day. Of course it was a dumb lucky shot but I couldn't have been more thrilled.
Over the years my Grandpa used to tell people about that moment on the little bridge when we would be at a hardware store or gun shop talking hunting and someone would ask him about me, I think he was as pleased about it all as I was.
It's funny the little memories that stay with you over the years.

 

[Natty Bumppo]

Good topic. My dad is a 1st generation hunter, so not a lot of deep tradition in our family, but still good tradition. Like many, we now spend most our time afield deer hunting, and much less small game than we used to. But as a kid there were no turkeys around, and now they're abundant, so we have quality turkey hunts, too. My kids got their 1st bb gun this week. In coming years, they'll definitely get the thrill of small game hunting. Here's a pic of our beagle, Ike, after his last rabbit hunt. He had a lot of white for a beagle, but he was a good rabbit dog. I think I was a senior, so probably winter of '95.

View attachment 23062

Great pic! Thanks for sharing.

 

[Natty Bumppo]

Another thing I miss is - in the days of yore, smaller sporting goods shops catered to hunters & fishermen. !

Boy, is that true! We still have a few small, family run gun stores. But the days of the family owned and operated sporting goods shops are over. I recall going downtown with my dad in the late 70's to buy something from our local store...maybe a basketball or a jacket or whatever. The owner wouldn't even make my dad pay. He tell him to take it and he'd jot the item down in a notebook and my dad would eventually make good on it.

 

[Natty Bumppo]

The army surplus clothes were cold and hardly anyone had much camo...

Spent many of my early years hunting as a teen in cold army surplus! The Mickey Mouse boots were about the best thing I had for my feet. Didn't want to walk to far in them though!

Hunting season gave me the opportunity to drop the old girlfriend and start anew when season was over. Ah the teenage years.

I kinda cringe at the thought of them looking down on me in a stand with a pair of gloves that was made specifically so I could work my touch screen. And if they ever saw some of the bucks I’ve let walk since those years they’d backhand me.

.

Well, I don't have the problem about letting bucks walk. But yes, I often think about my gramp and what he'd think if he could see some of the ridiculous gadgets hunters bring afield these days.

 

[Natty Bumppo]

The farm I now hunt deer on and post many pictures of is the one I grew up on. You guys will find this hard to believe this, but when I was growing up there was not a single deer on that farm - and not a single deer within 30 miles. I went on my first deer hunt at around 13 years old, and we drove nearly 3 hours to hunt on public land.

By the time I was 18, there were rumors of a few deer here and there in our area, but I never saw one on the home place until I was in my 20s, and it was just passing through.

However, i grew up small game hunting. Squirrels were plentiful in some years, but rabbits and quail were not usually very abundant. I also had many treeing hounds and hunted coons and squirrels with these. My dad started taking me hunting when I was very small, and I loved it. I hunted a lot with family and friends back in those days, and the memories are just precious.

I cherish the memories of those days but also cherish the ones currently being made with me and my son hunting together. This year was incredible for us and the last few years have been good.

BTW: I never saw a turkey on our land until I was in my 30s. Yesterday, I counted 102 turkeys in the soybean field that borders my farm. Yes, the old memories are great, but the new memories are great too.

Great post Native. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Bill]

Dad bought me a Crossman 177

Man now you’re digging up the old memories. Can you imagine any parent today letting 11 year olds roam free with pump air guns? My neighbor and partner in crime had a 177 as did my brother. I had a pump daisy. We toted those things everywhere and no bird was safe! Similar story, We were walking across a field one day locked and loaded and jumped a covey of quail, the neighbor kid threw up and brought one down . We were shocked! Dumb luck...

When we couldn’t repeat it I came up with the spectacular idea of taping a cut off tent pole to the end of my BB gun barrel and dropping one of my Dads 12 gauge shells down it so the BB would hit the primer. Low and behold it made the shell fire but the pellets had no pressure.. the shell had enough pressure to separate my cheap daisy barrel though

 

[Natty Bumppo]

Back when I was a teenager and and a young man in my early twenties I hunted hard and often. I just didn’t know what I was doing. Sometimes I didn’t see deer because they weren’t there. Other times I didn’t see deer because I did everything wrong.

Man, ain't that the truth. When I think about all the energy I put into hunting and all the things I did wrong...hunting the wrong places, hunting the wrong times, going too fast, not going fast enough.

 

[Native Hunter]

Great post Native. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks Natty. At the risk of someone wanting to steal my extra cool hunting hat - I will post a picture of me with the first buck I ever killed. I was at the tender age of 14. We drove 30 minutes pulling a boat, crossed a lake and climbed a mountain to hunt on the public land at the top of the hill. I know it was just pure luck, but it was a proud day for both dad and myself. I will never forget that day. The picture was taken at home.

 

[Natty Bumppo]

Thanks Natty. At the risk of someone wanting to steal my extra cool hunting hat - I will post a picture of me with the first buck I ever killed. I was at the tender age of 14. We drove 30 minutes pulling a boat, crossed a lake and climbed a mountain to hunt on the public land at the top of the hill. I know it was just pure luck, but it was a proud day for both dad and myself. I will never forget that day. The picture was taken at home.

That's a classic! The hat, and the pic. I still wear a Jones style hat.

 

[Mortenson]

Yes that is a cool pic! Great story and a good 1st buck. I've been known to sport that hat in the modern era. The price was right, being free. Hand-me-downs are a part of tradition.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Native - Great pic & story !! Those early hunts & successes stick with us like glue. The thing that makes the flavor of those times so great is who we shared them with.

 

[H20fwler]

Man now you’re digging up the old memories. Can you imagine any parent today letting 11 year olds roam free with pump air guns? My neighbor and partner in crime had a 177 as did my brother. I had a pump daisy. We toted those things everywhere and no bird was safe! Similar story, We were walking across a field one day locked and loaded and jumped a covey of quail, the neighbor kid threw up and brought one down . We were shocked! Dumb luck...

When we couldn’t repeat it I came up with the spectacular idea of taping a cut off tent pole to the end of my BB gun barrel and dropping one of my Dads 12 gauge shells down it so the BB would hit the primer. Low and behold it made the shell fire but the pellets had no pressure.. the shell had enough pressure to separate my cheap daisy barrel though

I used to put two or three BB's in the crossman shooting at sparrows thinking it upped the odds giving me some kind of a pattern...later on we used to buy the "high tech" ammo, those little silver dart looking pellets for when we wanted to try for a pigeon in the barn.
When I graduated up to a 22LR it was nothing to go through a brick of shells on a Saturday out at the farm.

 

[JackTerp]

I just checked Google Earth and I grew up 5.81 miles from downtown Pittsburgh as the crow flies. My earliest memory was my Dad calling to tell me that they were coming home from the yearly trip to Emporium, Pa. He told me they had gotten a couple deer and I was allowed to wait up until they got home. I was 8 years old. When they showed up, they took the deer directly to my Grandpa's house so my Grandma could butcher them. She was one hell of a demon with the butchering knives, just don't get in her way.

I have been obsessed with deer hunting ever since. I hunted deer year round, without any weapon, but I still hunted them. For many years the family would not believe that I found deer tracks in the dairy pasture behind my house. A local farmer that had a roadside produce stand, told me that he had seen several deer on his farm. Nobody would believe him or me. At least not until I took a doe with a bow in 1962. I had met Ben Pearson at a county fair and was totally mesmerized about bow hunting, and still am though I have to use a crossbow now due to bad shoulders.

I may be the first person that ever planted a foodplot. My cousin worked for a seed and feed store in Carnegie. He called one day to ask my Mom if she needed any vegetable seeds. It seems the the building had a leak in the roof and a whole mess of seeds got wet during a rainstorm. Dad drove to the store because free seed for the garden was rare. I got a whole basket full of seeds and after Mom got what she wanted I had no idea of what to do with the rest. That was when I remembered what the farmer had told me so I took all of that seed to the back of the dairy pasture and found a clearing just over the fence. I had carrots and lettuce and beets and all kinds of beans and corn. I raked the area and planted most of the seeds one at a time just like Mom did.

About a month later I had to get my Dad to go with me to the plot just to prove there were deer tracks in it. He was totally dumbfounded. He talked about that day until he passed away in 2001. That was in 1963.

I hunted deer all year, every year. Not with a weapon, but just to try to figure them out. They never disappoint me and they almost always seem to be one step ahead of me. And I love it.

The family is a big one. I have over 50 cousins and most of them used to hunt. But they only hunted 3 or 4 days a year. They were into any and every sport available but those activities never interested me. When I met my wife-to-be in HS, I made it clear that deer hunting was going to be my passion from October till the week after Thanksgiving every year. She said fine and I knew I was in love. :)

In 1985, work took me from Pittsburgh to Atlanta then finally to Laurens, SC. I was a little disappointed on the size of the local deer.They were tiny by my normal standards. So, I began an experiment of my own. The soil samples I had taken here at home showed the soil was extremely poor. I carved out two small foodplots on my 25 acres and started year-round protein feeding of the 8 or 10 deer that showed up every night to browse some of the clover that was growing naturally in what I call our back lawn. After about three years of this, I noticed a major difference in the size of the deer and the racks of the couple bucks that showed up. I was pleased as punch. But, this came with a huge negative. Locals started talking about seeing a "big" buck crossing the road just up the road from my house. Suddenly I had hunters showing up all over my property and the surrounding land. I fought trespassers for a couple years and finally just quit feeding the deer. It was no fun any more and I was too frustrated. Then my cousin Dave called me. He had retired from his corporate career and found 165 acres of land for sale outside Washington, PA. It was not good for anything except deer hunting. It was too steep and all heavily wooded but held a lot of deer. So, that began a new experiment that is still going on today even though Dave passed away last year. We are very picky about who hunts the land and it is by invitation only. We have a core of young guys that are almost as passionate about the deer and the land as we were. Almost. But we were slowly bringing them around. Now it's kinda up to me. I hope I'm up for it. It's a 550 mile trip, but I make it as often as I can and talk to several of the youngster a couple times a month. I hope that someday they'll have a conversation around a campfire and talk about Uncle Dave and Cousin Jack.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Jack - Feeding the fire of younger guys ……… And still workin' the Pa. woods !!!

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

Man now you’re digging up the old memories. Can you imagine any parent today letting 11 year olds roam free with pump air guns? My neighbor and partner in crime had a 177 as did my brother. I had a pump daisy. We toted those things everywhere and no bird was safe! Similar story, We were walking across a field one day locked and loaded and jumped a covey of quail, the neighbor kid threw up and brought one down . We were shocked! Dumb luck...

When we couldn’t repeat it I came up with the spectacular idea of taping a cut off tent pole to the end of my BB gun barrel and dropping one of my Dads 12 gauge shells down it so the BB would hit the primer. Low and behold it made the shell fire but the pellets had no pressure.. the shell had enough pressure to separate my cheap daisy barrel though

My at the time 9 year old got a pump BB gun for Christmas 2017.

 

[JackTerp]

My at the time 9 year old got a pump BB gun for Christmas 2017.

LOL,,,,,,,I have to learn to read more slowly with these old eyes. I could have sworn I read that your son got a "bump BB gun". How in the hell do you put a bump stock on a BB gun? ....................:)

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

LOL,,,,,,,I have to learn to read more slowly with these old eyes. I could have sworn I read that your son got a "bump BB gun". How in the hell do you put a bump stock on a BB gun? ....................:)

Ha thats funny