Wildlife & Game

In this year of 2000, I have decided to close the photo album that contains seventy years of my life and four generations of my family. Alan and Debra have started one so it is time for me to retire.

1999 was one of the driest years I have ever seen and 2000 was one of the wettest (except for 1942). The animals and game birds have gone along the way. No deer, coyote, fish cats, possum, otter and beaver. There were pheasants when we came here. They hunted them on Wednesdays and Saturdays, cock birds only. There were a lot of hedge rows and the creek had quite a marsh with swail grass but no cattails growing for cover. Two or three cars would park here at the farm to hunt. They were mostly Vergennes guys.

In the winter the pheasants came to the apple trees by the well where Alan's house is now. Dad would throw out a pail of grain. It was quite a sight, with 15-20 of pheasants. This was in the 30's and 40's before the war. Then the fox pelts went down to $.50. Nobody trapped or hunted then. That was the end of the pheasants. I shot my last two in 1946. Charlie Ross and Ray Litchfield started hatching pheasant eggs in 1997. They released 100-150 birds on our farm land to train dogs. The year 2000 left us with three different hens on the Whitcomb farm with 6, 8, and 10 little ones. What a sight!! We still have some left in the winter of 2001.

Partridges are about the same as they were back then. In 1968 turkeys were brought in and have really multiplied around here. In the last couple of years we have hit three or four nest with the mowers.

In 1998, we found 103 turkeys picking in the manure by Bottom's Swamp. This year we saw 36 across the creek including some toms.

Duck were black, many years ago and we never saw Woodies or Mallards. Now we hardly see a black duck. There is good hunting for Woodies down by the Swamp.

Canadian geese started to land around here in the 60's. The boys and I shot quite a few. In the last ten years they are nesting here. About thirty of them will gather at the Lime Kiln trestle. They closed the season in the 90's because they were low in numbers. They started an early season in September of 1998 for a week to kill off some of the native geese. I shot my first snow goose in 1975. That was the first year they arrived, and now we have them by the thousands.

The first coy dog I saw was on the Ledoux Cross Rd. Since then they have had their ups and downs. Mange takes care of them along with the deer hunters who get a few. Usually here on the farm we kill three or four a year. The coy dogs take care of the woodchucks. Willie Rotax and George Jimmo used to shoot 200-300 woodchucks a summer. They would shoot them on the weekends and in the evenings on the back roads around here. When we used to get a coy dog, we would skin it and dry the hide which we could get $48.00 for.

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