Habitat Loss: The Growing Factor As It Shrinks

I'm 57 and have been hunting my neighborhood since I was old enough to start tagging along with dad. I think I can safely say that at least 50% of the huntable wildlife habitat we had in my earliest years is now gone. Most is due to row crop farming. This includes complete removal of wood lots, grown up pastures, fence rows, draining of swamps, etc.

Another pretty significant factor is urban sprawl. Many of the former woodlots folks used to hunt now have houses in them, and the landowners have cleared open lawn areas around the houses.

Row crop farming is different than it used to be too. They used to leave the stubble and stalks in the field all winter. As kids I remember kicking up quail and rabbits in corn stubble. So although the crop and majority of growth was gone, there was limited habitat available in those fields still. Now they typically fall cultivate and turn everything under leaving zero habitat and burying most of the waste grain the combines missed.

My particular interest is deer, and what I see out of all of this is too many hunters crowding into the remaining huntable habitat. Couple this with long hunting seasons, generous cheap deer tags available, much more efficient weapons, cameras for scouting, and all the other gadgets and it's not a stretch to envision pretty significant reduction of the deer herd. I see it in my neighborhood.

Ty, great posts and I agree 100%. For the last 30 years I have seen the woods slowly change to non-native species and loss of a lot of trees. It seems most tree loss areas are now Asian Honeysuckle or yellow mustard plant. I only see the deer eating honeysuckle then when all other food is not available, just like Japanese yews. The cost to protect the native bushes and trees from browsing is very time consuming and costly during the young years of the plants. I wish there was an easier way. Indiana needs to follow the other States and discourage bird feeders. Some States have gone to making it illegal to feed birds or any wildlife.