Hunting for Habitat

Program Reduces Crop Damage, Builds Habitat, Improves Hunting

(Progressive Farmer photo by Sarah Ott)

Farming 1,000 acres of corn, soybeans, oats and hay with his son and two employees, Edward O'Brien, Somerset County, Pa., has had his share of trouble with deer, particularly in fields directly adjacent to woodlands. That's the primary reason he sought to participate in a nearly 100-year-old farm-game cooperative program with the Pennsylvania Game Commission that offers public hunting access on his property.

ESTABLISH HABITAT

"The Game Commission comes in here and does cutting back between the fields and woods, creating a 30-foot area planted to vines, shrubs and trees that offers food and good habitat for birds, rabbits and other small game," he says. The work pushes back the type of cover favored by deer.

O'Brien has been participating for about six years in what's now known as the Game Commission's Cooperative Farm-Game Program. He has 500 acres enrolled in the program. Friends and other hunters work the ground and control deer populations.

O'Brien has seen other benefits. "Fifty years ago, I used to see rabbits everywhere," he recalls, "but then they seemed to disappear, and I didn't see any for awhile." Since participating in the program and with the habitat restoration that goes with it, the rabbits have returned.

Presently, some 21,000 Pennsylvania landowners are involved in the Cooperative Farm-Game Program, says Mike Pruss, the Game Commission's private lands section chief. Seven hundred of those landowners have been in the program more than 50 years. The initial program began in 1915, when the Game Commission paid for public hunting access on private lands. The commission stopped paying landowners in 1936. Since then, the program has gone through many incarnations.

"Initially, we were trying to get at least 1,000 acres of huntable forest land close together [to create a single area]," Pruss says. But that required cooperation among adjacent landowners. With suburban sprawl, creating thousand-acre public hunting areas is proving nearly impossible. So, the Game Commission lowered the requirement for a single unit to 500 acres.

It also offers what it calls a "safety zone" option for smaller landowners like Bruce Francisco. The Shippenville, Pa., landowner has 82 acres of mostly woods and brush that includes an old coal mine. Francisco and his father reclaimed it after planting free trees provided by the Game Commission. The property has been enrolled in the program since the 1970s.

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"We've seen a big increase in deer, wild turkeys and songbirds," he says. Francisco plants 100 to 150 new trees a year and also gets bluebird and bat boxes from the Game Commission.

BENEFITS APLENTY

Pruss says landowners enjoy a fairly long list of benefits from the Cooperative Farm-Game Program besides better control of the deer population. They include:

-- Free habitat management surveys and free habitat creation, such as removing trees from the edges of fields. Tree removal can also improve yields where crops compete with tree roots for moisture and nutrients.

-- Property is periodically patrolled by Game Department personnel during hunting season.

"We enforce no-ATV-use, as we do on [Game Commission] land," Pruss adds. Signage also is supplied to designate safety areas near homes and inform hunters of unlawful acts.

-- Free liability protection if hunters are given access to property at no charge, which protects landowners from potential lawsuits should a hunter get injured on their land.

-- Up to 500 free trees each year to plant on property, as well as free nesting boxes for bluebirds, owls, bats and kestrels.

-- The Game Commission also supplies the food and habitat cover seedlings that benefit wildlife. Landowners with habitat favorable to pheasants may be given preference for birds in the commission's stocking program.

-- A complimentary subscription to Game News, the commission's 85-year-old publication that promotes hunting and trapping, the programs of the Game Commission, natural resource management and conservation practices.

IMPROVED HUNTING ACCESS

The program's accumulation of private land for public hunting access includes large industrial-use lands owned by timber and investment companies. The Game Commission maintains an up-to-date map of all Game Commission--owned land and private land open to public hunting at www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/state_game_lands/11363.

The map is a handy tool for hunters, though they are required to ask owners' permission before hunting on private property.

"When we surveyed hunters around the state about why they weren't hunting," Pruss says, "they cited lack of hunting land as the primary reason." The Cooperative Farm-Game Program adds 2.6 million additional acres to the state's land area available for hunting. "The program allows us to create new habitat projects on private property focusing on native grasses for pheasants and young forest habitat for golden-winged warblers and roughed grouse," Pruss says.

FUNDING SOURCES

The Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act, the Pennsylvania Game Fund and incentives from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Services' (NRCS) Grassland Reserve Program provide most of the funding for the Cooperative Farm-Game Program. The NRCS program encourages farmers to defer haying or grazing, for example, until after nesting season for certain bird species. The Pittman-Robertson Act provides federal aid to the states for management and restoration of wildlife. It's financed by an 11% excise tax on sporting arms and ammunition.

O'Brien plans to re-enroll in the program when his current five-year lease is up. He says while hunters don't always follow the rule of asking permission to hunt, he's never had any problems.

Francisco agrees. "You can't go wrong," he says. "I've definitely seen an increase in wildlife on my place."

(PS/AG)

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