Are we all in denial that natural predators kill 100 birds for every one shot by a hunter who pays for a tag employ's a biologist and conservation officers to conserve them.
Geez, go ahead stick your head in the sand. Stop those evil humans from destroying the lek and let the predators do what they do and you will still loose the 2nd dumbest bird in the world next to the turkey.
A grouse not shot by a hunter is just predator feed.
Yeah, that's an interesting point of view.
I'm another one of those guys that counts sage grouse; have been counting them here in Rich County Utah/Uinta County Wyoming for over 30 years, same places, same time of year, year after year. The oil and gas knuckleheads are gone yet the grouse just aren't doing that well, even on private land that sees little, if any, bird hunting.
Sure there's a huntable population, but it doesn't compare to the numbers we had when the natural gas industry had everything around here tore up and, from what I seen, there were many more people hunting sage grouse.
What's up? The poor greater sage-grouse has lots of enemies other than hunters and predators are at the top of the list. The sage-grouse here are getting hammered by predatory birds. Eagles and hawks as always, but there's a new threat; ravens. Yes, ravens; smart and opportunistic, ravens are not only raiding nests, they are hunting sage-grouse chicks like a harrier, gliding low and slow over the tops of the sagebrush. Ravens have negatively impacted sage-grouse numbers to a point that the DLL talked the DWR into a special raven "harvest" to help the grouse.
Then there's coyotes, fox, badgers, West Nile, too little rain, too much rain, Round-up, selenium, and Dick Cheney.
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