Balance in nature in Chatham County, NC

Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2012 11:46:28 -0400
From: “John R Dykers”
Subject: Balance in nature – KJ Laurro -3 July 12

KJ Laurro is exactly correct about the burgeoning deer population in Chatham being secondary to human activity! Our farm used to be a hunt club for quail hunters from all over the country! And deer were so scarce that a neighbor started a deer farm! And a generation earlier survived the depression by trapping rabbits and shipping them up East.

Mike Dugan and I used to go quail hunting every Thursday morning in the 1960-70’s during the season, and the dogs were trained not only to point out the quail on the ground but also to retrieve them and we ate every one! DELICIOUS. The limit was 8 quail a day per hunter and one day I shot 8 quail with 8 shots (actually missed one and had one double, two birds with one shot, literally) and I decided to stop and just brag about that! (quail are delicious, but hard to clean!).

BUT we cattlemen and homeowners did exactly as KJ said. We turned all those fallow fields full of weeds with feed and cover for the quail into fescue lawns and pastures ideal for deer and I have not seen nor heard a quail in the wild for over two years! Coyotes are another matter. If there were quail they would eat them readily, but their big problem prey are newborn kids, baby goats, although I’m sure they would feast on a newborn child left lying in the pasture but fortunately that is not likely, I hope. Newborn fawns are vulnerable as are newborn calves, but both have protective mothers, and I have had only one calf we only suspected might have fallen victim to coyote, but I have seen them get the first of a pair of kids at dusk and the second was gone before dawn. So we had to sell our goat herd of over 120 goats and they were really helping out pastures. It is not just kill, kill, kill, but we humans too are a part of nature, and responsible human breeding is the response KJ is flirting around but could not just come out and say, but I will. Pregnancy prevention is the most important task of the 21st Century, and such flies in the face of “Go forth and multiply!”. (We have done that and we can stop now!)

Various tribal groups try to take advantage of democracy and crowd out other groups, just like we crowded out the quail! Or just like explorers, invaders, settlers from Europe (choose your word to fit your bias) crowded out the Native Americans. (These people migrated from Asia when the going got tough in an ice age and spread all the way to Patagonia! They enyoyed the good hunting and survived in that balance for millenia, killing game to eat and live, just as a goat herder might do with coyote here and now.)

John Dykers