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Took an ATV ride on Sunday afternoon through a closed & rehabilitated township landfill. The kind of place that should be teeming with groundhogs in the spring. Not one hole to be seen anywhere.
I guess I can only assume that the overpopulated coyotes have cleaned them out for good.
I do see them from time to time along the roadsides on the fringes of Peterborough, but not many in fields or pastures.
What about your area ?
These days,farmers are cultivating every square inch they can,so,Ghog dens are being ploughed under. Concentrate on scanning field edges with rock outcroppings sticking out of heavy undergrowth. Split rail fence rows are another great place to look. I like to cruise concession roads,stopping to climb into the box of the truck with binoculars. When I find promising areas,I start door knockin'. There's not as many as there used to be making it a challenge. Coyotes love them for an easy meal and so do bears.Quote:
Originally Posted by 73hunter
Never had a hog on the property for 20 yrs.....then about 3 yrs ago they moved in. Now I have them right in the yard burrowing under my Range shooting shack of all places !!
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Your right about that, 30 years ago there was boat loads of groundhogs everywhere around here (durham region). Now they are pretty much gone from here. There's tons of coyotes around here now so I don't see any future for the groundhogs in this area anytime soon.Quote:
Originally Posted by 73hunter
I actually have been seeing more of them than past years but not in fields. Mostly just inside bush edges and in ditches along roads where they feel safer
I see quite a few , but they are actually right in town on factory lawns and on the boulevards, watching traffic go by.
Funny you mention the return of groundhogs, hadn't seen any in probably 25 years, 2 weeks ago there was one in the back yard, where it came from and went to I don't know. One thing for sure, it wouldn't last long here.
I use to see lots in the shelburne area. It was not uncommon to see a hundred or so on a sunny Sunday drive through the country, but they’re mostly gone now. Even the private property we hunt had all kinds of dens, but they’re grown over and abandoned. I figure everyone is right about the coyotes making short work of these guys. Too bad, they’re goofy animals. It would always make us laugh to see them, somehow, perched on a fence post and probably pondering life.
Coyotes and farming practices have changed the whole scene for ground hogs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Birdbuff
Years ago , the Durham On. area was over run with ground hogs, they even had yearly ground hog shoots that attracted hunters from all over.
Yes, I imagine they’re around if you put the effort in to look for them. My point in the post was that a hundred acres of rolling grassland would have been stuffed full of them not all that long ago. To not see any there now is disappointing.Quote:
Originally Posted by trimmer21
i see them at keele and steeles all the time at my college hahahha
I wonder which will get posted first. The glory shots of your kills or your mug shot on the evening news..Quote:
Originally Posted by Bowjob
hahahahhahahaQuote:
Originally Posted by Snowwalker
There are about 100 acres of hay fields at my place. There are NO ground hogs, no dens in the fields. Used to be lots of them. Up until this year there was one ,had a den almost under our barn. Think the den is being used by a skunk this year. There was also no Jack sign last winter. Think the coyotes , have cleaned every thing out, Sad. old243
i see them here and there in wellington and mapleton county. sad to hear they are disappearing but im sure our horse guys dont mind that all that much :P
We are in dire need of predator and varmint control.
Their was a time when we distinguished between critters and varmints.
I just ordered a new FoxPro electronic coyote caller from Cabelas. They were "on sale" and shipping is free. I'm making a concerted effort to rid my friend's farm of the pests this summer. They're causing him a lot of grief...more than usual. They gotta go.
I suspect the chuck numbers are not as bad as imagined. In the days when they use to haunt the hay fields their biggest challenge was the farm boy and the low powdered .22 or possibly a shotgun. When the high power artillery came rolling out, and an increase in the number of hunters, the open hay fields grew less attractive for burrows and they migrate to areas along field edges. The more progressive ones may have even went urban, where shooting is prohibited. It may have been some losses to predations but in the end it was most likely hunting pressure not changes in agriculture that reduced their presence in open fields. The spread of rural suburbia probably also plays into the picture as well contributing to the loss of habitat with house basements and septic beds displacing the prime burrowing areas, in road side fields.
You don’t stop hunting because you grow old. You grow old because you stop hunting.
- Gun Nut
The lack of fence rows has a huge impact on them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gun Nut
I know what you are talking about with high powered rifles but you have to go back a long way before people were not using high velocity 22 rifles for groundhogs, back 70 years or so. When I started hunting in 99 there were lots of groundhogs, well after the use of centerfire rifles for whistle pigs started. I used a 22LR, then 222 Rem, 6.5x55mm, shotgun, always found some on the same fields week after week.
I really disagree with your correlation with high speed rifles and over hunting because more hunters were in the field. That doesn't make sense to me because not a lot of people use high speed and there's even a lot less hunters,today. Urban sprawl affecting habitat in the south is a real issue,without doubt,especially,east and north of the "GTA",but,that hasn't stopped Coyote population explosions and the fact Black Bears are being sighted more and more often around those areas. Both love to feed on rodents and are masters at ambushing GHogs outside their dens and tunnels.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gun Nut
Its not hunting pressure thats killed their numbers, at least not here in durham region. Groundhogs were everywhere even in town, they were on every patch cut grass, even along the highway. Theres was far more hunting pressure here 30+ years ago. Now hunting is non-existant anywhere even close to town. What i do see now almost every evening is coyotes crossing the field across from my house, no ground hogs at all......
Coyotes
On our farm the coyotes have wiped them out.
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I grew up in Courtice back in the late 70's, back when it was totally rural farmland. My groundhog fields were at the south end of Courtice Road, beside Dom's Auto wreckers and Darlington prov. Park. 1977 - 1980 - any 100acre hayfield would have at least 20 pigs in it. We stalk and shoot them with our Cooey .22's. Lots of grouse, Cottontail, European Hare, and foxes were everywhere. You could walk the railway line with a 177 pellet gun and shoot 6 cottontail in under an hour. I spent my entire childhood in the "bush" and did not see my first coyote until 1981. I literally got to see them arrive on the landscape. Within 5-7 years of their arrival - 90% decline in groundhogs, red fox almost vanished, grouse, cottontail, squirrels, European hare. It was literally like the click of a light switch. I even noticed a drastic decline in meadow vole numbers when we'd hay. No drastic changes in landuse, just the arrival of the dirty ole coyote.
I'm going to throw in with the guys who say Coyote. I started hunting in the late 60's, never saw a yote till maybe 20 years ago at the most. Now I see them almost every time I'm in the bush.
I'll vote coyotes as well. They run our street almost nightly now. I'm in the west end of Peterborough within sight of the hospital. Lots of lost pet signs in the neighbourhood. They've eaten all of the smaller animals outside of town so they've moved to where the food is, and they don't appear to be too uncomfortable on city streets.
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That's the neighborhood I grew up in. All the farmland we used to shoot GHogs in is mostly gone,now. We hunted the farm fields south of Parkhill Rd. and west of Wallis Dr./Merino Rd. The other area was through the old Valleyview Public School to the tracks and fields to the north. Geez,now,I feel really old.Quote:
Originally Posted by GW11
Not old... just seasoned, haha!Quote:
Originally Posted by trimmer21
I'm a little south of Merino, just west of Wallis. The hospital has recently warned their employees against using the walking path between Wallis and the hospital parking lot because it's a frequent coyote runway. We seem to be on their main travel path between Kawartha Golf and Country Club and the green space near the hospital.
One of the places I still see a few groundhogs is just off the Parkway, but the coyotes have started to figure out how to get them there as well.
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Coyotes, are a big factor, but also farming practices have changed.Quote:
Originally Posted by sabmgb
We no longer see the large pasture fields or hay fields like we used to, now those fields are used to grow corn, soy beans and some mixed grain , these fields are constantly worked which does no allow groundhogs to establish their burrows like we used to see them.
Theres lots of grass, hay fields around me and not a single groundhog to be found.Quote:
Originally Posted by jaycee
Same here north of Kingston. The hay fields that held hogs 30 years ago are still hay fields but have about zero groundhogs anymore, and this has been for close to 20 years now. No poisons, no deep tilling, no heavy hunting by firearms, just a lot of yotes in the area. The only small population of hogs I know of is in town inside security fences of factories/plants that the yotes can not access easily.
John
I actually saw a ground hog yesterday. That is the only one in 2 years. old243
i saw one around 1130 the night of the 4th running into beavermead from the soccer fields. liftlock golf course had boatloads of ground hogs a couple years ago, still see a few hanging around the canalQuote:
Originally Posted by GW11