GAME as a Farm Crop Emphasized by Agricultural Adjustment

   The reduction of planted areas in the United States has emphasized anew the possibilities of game as a farm crop.  Millions of acres of submarginal land have been retired from production, and replacement crops are being sought for the areas that formerly contributed to farmers’ surpluses.  Game management under these conditions offers itself as an opportune side line to general agriculture.

of the United States. In Texas landowners licensed to sell shooting rights have charged as much as $4 a day, or 25 cents an acre under leases; and in Ohio 28 farmers on an 11,000-acre area under central management realized a revenue of $500 during the fall of 1931 by issuing 200 hunting permits. Similar practices have been followed in other States, and the farmers have realized additional profits by providing hunters with meals, lodging, and various services.

The prospects for encouraging the increase of wildlife—for profit as well as for general enjoyment—have thus seemed so important that the Bureau of Biological Survey has prepared Farmers’ Bulletin 1719, Improving the Farm Environment for Wildlife, and has mimeographed recommendations on planting for wildlife in the Corn Belt and in the Cotton Belt. It has also prepared exhibit material for use at agricultural expositions and sportsmen’s shows.

Two factors in increasing the abundance of wildlife, the Bureau has pointed out in its publications, are of essential importance—cover and food. Both require special consideration by the farmer who wishes to develop the wildlife on his premises. Food, of course, is indispensable, but cover must receive first attention.

Wildlife cannot persist on land without adequate shelter from enemies and protection for nesting. For the majority of the small forms of wildlife, cover means low, dense vegetation, some of which should be tangled, or stiff and thorny, so that in time of need the pursued can dive into it to escape the pursuer. Weedy fields, for instance, provide fairly good concealing cover, but they are much improved for wildlife by the presence of rose or berry patches, plum thickets, or honeysuckle tangles.

Planting to improve cover can well be made to serve a double purpose by using food-producing vegetation, and a triple use by carrying it on where erosion control is needed. Greenbriers or catbriers, blackberries, dewberries, grapevines, Virginia creeper, and Japanese honeysuckle—to mention a few examples—have a threefold usefulness—as soil binders, as food producers, and as cover. Choice of plants will, of course, depend on their suitability for particular regions.

The increase of game cannot be achieved without the expenditure of effort on the part of the farmer, but the efforts are more than amply repaid, and the necessary information on methods can readily be obtained from the Bureau of Biological Survey or other agencies. Game management also creates conditions that attract other desirable forms of wildlife, beautify the farm, and add to the pleasures that come from the presence of birds and other living things. Besides adding a few dollars to the income and utilizing areas retired because of the necessities of agricultural adjustment, game management thus provides for an enrichment of farm life.

GAME Management and Forest Protection Are Related Tasks

Many professional foresters, formerly concerned almost exclusively with timber production, now realize that game and fur bearers are also valuable products of forest lands and that the forest fauna constitutes an important national resource. This realization is an important development in the history of wildlife in the United States. At the time of the discovery of North America, large and small game in abundance ranged throughout the length and breadth of the continent, but with the clearing of forests for farms and the occupation of grasslands for agriculture or grazing, the animals disappeared or resorted to the fast-diminishing forests that remained.

As the land was cleared for cultivation in the East, the logging process, taking about all of the merchantable timber, extended successively from area to area nearly throughout the region. The removal of the forest canopy, however, has resulted in a growth of small trees, berry-producing shrubs, and other vegetation that affords tender browse within easy reach of deer, fruit for bears and other wildlife, and sustenance for rabbits and wild turkeys. The forest setting has thus been prepared for the restoration of these species on a scale far exceeding such game populations in the same areas in former times.

In Western States most of the game of the open country has disappeared or has taken refuge in the national forests or national parks.  Elk and mule deer, for instance, forced down by winter snows in the higher mountains along the backbone of the continent, formerly migrated far out to the surrounding plains, where the snow was light and feed abundant. The winter ranges they once knew, however, are now utilized as farms or for the grazing of domestic stock, and the game must remain at the higher elevations, exposed to the dangers of cold and starvation. Thus wildlife developments throughout the country have emphasized the importance of the remaining forest areas.

   Experience has shown how readily game can be restored where food is abundant, and where killing by man or by predatory animals is effectively controlled; it has also demonstrated the vital importance of checking numbers in time to prevent the destruction of forage. The regulation of game abundance, therefore, becomes an important part of the routine of forest management. Definite plans must be based on field studies of numbers and game range-carrying capacity, with due consideration for any domestic stock or agricultural or other possibly conflicting interests. Such game management means that the seasons for hunting, the bag limits, and the sex ratio should be fixed each year in accordance with local conditions. It also means that hunting licenses must be limited to unit areas, instead of being applicable for use almost anywhere in a particular State. Such control of licenses is imperative if the depletion of game is to be prevented in one unit area while a mounting surplus is left unchecked in another. Similar principles should be applied in the taking of fur animals, which are likely to be reduced to the verge of extermination.

Owing to varying and often complicated conditions, game management brings into prominence many local forestry problems. The suitability or carrying capacity of a forested area for game depends largely upon the stage of forest succession, and as younger timber stands contain far more small growth available as forage than do those approaching maturity, logging or thinning operations as carried on by the Civilian Conservation Corps under competent direction are usually beneficial for wildlife.

Deer especially, but elk, antelope, moose, and other animals, under what may be regarded as normal conditions, are dainty feeders, nibbling the leaves and tender shoots of plants of many kinds, taking a little food here and a little there. The cropped branches are rapidly renewed, and there is little or no harm to the general vegetation.  But some plants, more palatable than others, are gradually killed through overbrowsing by an excessive number of animals. These animals must then resort to the less palatable plants, and the progressive destruction of foliage, often becoming apparent at first only in spots, may extend to the entire forest. Overbrowsing by game animals is often undetected by the ordinary observer until a fine marking their highest reach is clearly evident. - Wherever such a line is seen, it is an indication that a serious situation has already been allowed to develop.  The repeatedly defoliated plant stems cease to put out leaves, and if their tops can be reached the trees or shrubs are killed or dwarfed in growth. If this process is continued, the inevitable result is starvation for the game, and this is usually accompanied by serious damage to forest reproduction. Even such small game as the various kinds of hares, rabbits, and squirrels may assume considerable importance, as these animals, especially the snowshoe hares, are subject to cyclic fluctuations, and where overabundant may become injurious to forest reproduction.

A striking illustration of the importance to both the game and the forest of disposing of surplus animals when the forage-producing capacity of a game range is threatened is afforded in the rise and fall of the mule deer of the Kaibab Plateau, in northern Arizona. This area was maintained as a refuge on which the number of deer mounted rapidly to a peak, resulting in serious injury to forest reproduction, permanent, impairment of the forage supply, and disaster to the deer through starvation.

In other parts of Arizona the overproduction of game has led to surpluses that threaten the forage supply and seriously injure forest reproduction. White-tailed deer in the Santa Catalina Mountains have greatly increased in recent years, and forest damage is resulting. Elk reintroduced on the Sitgreaves National Forest have become too numerous and destructive. Even the antelope, reduced in Arizona a few years ago to a point where extermination was imminent, have increased to thousands in the Coconino National Forest and adjoining territory.  The competition of domestic stock with the game animals has so reduced the normal forage supply that the antelope are forced to browse on junipers and other trees as high as they can reach, leaving them completely defoliated to a sharp line such as is seen on overutilized deer ranges. On areas closed to hunting, the mounting numbers of the antelope, like those of the deer, have been coincident with the control of predatory animals, mainly coyotes, instituted primarily in the interest of domestic stock production.

The deductions to be drawn from these, and from cases that might be mentioned in other States, east and west, should have a wide application in similar forested areas. The conservation of forest game and fur-bearing animals involves principles of wildlife management and adjustment that are comparatively simple, but a well-informed public is necessary if the inertia and prejudice that tend to paralyze constructive effort are to be overcome. Both wildlife and timber are major forest resources, to be fostered in proper relation to each other.