Outdoor Column: Old Tom and Ol' Red (2005-01-19)

An Outdoor Column From: Tom Conroy DNR Information Officer 261 Highway 15 South New Ulm,MN 56073 507-359-6014 tom.conroy@dnr.state.mn.us  January 19, 2005

Title: Old Tom and Ol' Red

We'd meet at old Tom's farm on winter weekend mornings. As my Dad and the other men milled about the farmyard, jawing, joking and backslapping, old Tom would lay out the day's plan. Old Tom was in charge, no questions asked.

Finally, between spits of tobacco juice, the old-timer would give the word to load the hounds. Trucks and cars were soon heading down country roads in all directions. To a boy who at that time considered a two-acre woodlot to be on the scale of Glacier National Park, it mystified me how these men seemed so intimately familiar with every hillside, creek bed and thicket for miles around.

Those weekend foxhunts were big-time adventures for this small town boy. Sometimes I would be directed to stand alone in a particular location (was I to tackle the fox if one came by?) and other times I would stand with my Dad or another hunter. Soon, the distant boom of a shotgun would be heard, the signal that the hunt was on. Usually it wouldn't be long before the faint baying of the hounds would break the stillness, a sign that they were on the trail of a fox.

Old Tom and those men are all gone now. So are many of the places we hunted, replaced by homes, roads and farmland. Gone, too, are the days when fox fur brought a decent price. Things have changed, no doubt. What has not changed, however, is our proclivity for castigating ol' Red as a nasty scoundrel.

Fox are predators. They survive by eating other living things. Back in the days of Old Tom, I don't recall anyone ever talking about the need to shoot fox because they were killing pheasants, ducks and the other ground-nesting critters we favored. In those days, free-ranging chickens, ducks and geese were commonplace on area farms and folks didn't take kindly to ol' Red helping himself to a free lunch whenever he pleased.

You don't often see poultry scratching around farmyards these days. As a result, ol' Red has turned his attention to other items on the menu. Now, we don't begrudge him dining on mice, rabbits or voles but woe to this varmint should he feast on a wild duck or pheasant. As his eating habits changed and his reputation as a farmyard thief in the night gradually went away, however, he would soon take on an even more sullied reputation.

Today, the red fox and others of his ilk (to include skunks, hawks, raccoons, and owls) are among the villains we tend to point the finger ? or gun ? at as the reason duck and pheasant populations are not what they once were. "Predator control" has become the mantra we chant when we debate what needs to be done to increase game bird populations. But, is predator control really the answer?

No doubt, predators impact wildlife populations ? on a local level. And predator control efforts, studies have demonstrated, can have positive effects ? on a local level. However, numerous studies have also concluded that predator control will not contribute to the long-term security of waterfowl or pheasant populations on more than a local level.

Attempting to remove predators from a large area would be tremendously expensive and its' impact only temporary. For that reason, organizations as renowned as Ducks Unlimited and even the Mississippi Flyway Council oppose such ideas. It's far better to use available resources to provide suitable habitat, they've concluded. (For more information on DU's position, check out their web site at www.ducks.org.)

Back in the days when old Tom and his party hunted fox, there was ample habitat around to support healthy populations of ducks and pheasants and other wildlife. But that was 40 or more years ago. Consider that over time we have drained 40 percent of the wetlands that once dotted the prairie pothole region of the northcentral U.S. and southcentral Canada and we have managed to destroy more than 99 percent of the continent's tallgrass prairie. Think that hasn't been a major blow to wildlife?

Large-scale predator control has been tried, sometimes with unfortunate, unintended consequences. The gray wolf and coyotes were once the targets of generously funded trapping and poisoning campaigns. What happened? Thinning these populations allowed the red fox to fill the void and move into the heart of the duck factory.

Where a parcel of land once supported a pair of coyotes and their offspring, it was now able to support three or four pair of foxes and their offspring. A fox is much more likely to focus on ducks and pheasants than is a coyote. Studies have shown that a piece of country dominated by foxes will have substantially lower duck-nesting success than a similar piece dominated by coyotes.

Predator control, as practiced by old Tom and the boys, helped keep the fox out of neighborhood hen houses. Temporarily. By winter's end, a dozen or more frozen red carcasses would be hanging by the tail on the clothesline behind the farmhouse. And the following winter, and the winter after that, there would again be a dozen or more fox on the line.

Here's an amazing thing about fox and other predators - they have this amazing ability to move about! Create a void and they'll quickly fill it. Trying to practice large-scale predator control, it seems, is rather like trying to sweep away leaves in a swirling windstorm.

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