Ted I don't doubt that I have a negligible impact on the continent's population of bobwhite.
I don't doubt that I do have a significant impact on my birdlease's population. I gave my case above.
I don't doubt that I have a negligible impact on the continent's population of bobwhite in the year 2030.
I don't doubt that I have a significant impact on my birdlease's population of bobwhite next season.
Between me and my late father we had one lease from 1966 until 2002. I have had this lease since 2004. I have hunted the same coveys year after year, decade after decade. Human predation of bobs can matter in that lease area.
My current leases are 4700 acres and 6300 acres. If I hunt out a covey in the middle of one of those leases a new covey does not instantly spring up in its place the next season. The loss of that covey is negligible in the overall population. It is significant to me.
And I go again to the tribe analogy. The covey has to live through Summer and Winter, nesting predation by 'coons, live bird predation by hawks, drought and flood. They have a system worked out. When there is water standing at the bottom of a certain draw they will always be in that area. When in drought they hang out in a plum thicket three hundred yards North. Before the rancher lets the cattle in they like the grassy ridge. After it is grazed out the bobs move to the bottom of the draw. But that knowledge is passed from generation to generation of bobs. And as bobs don't live through but two or three seasons that covey can go extinct in a hurry.
If I do shoot out a covey there is no doubt that, in a year or twenty, a new covey will start there, survive the learning curve and figure out a way to make a living. So yes, any vacuum I cause will be filled. But if it happens after me and my dogs are dead then I screwed up. Thus the desire to maximize the number of times I can shoot a bob over my pointing dogs leads me to look for a shotgun and load that lower the chance that I will kill two birds with one shot.
Thanks for your comments. I remembered some things I had forgotten in the process of trying to make my point.
Best,
Mike
Last edited by AmarilloMike; 02/12/14 02:19 PM.
