OT Critters on the farm

With all the talk on hear lately about ground hogs and turkeys, deer and others got me to thinking about a farm I rented along time ago. Me and a friend of mine were farming together and he had somehow found out about this farm and wanted to go over a talk to the owner about renting it. Well we did and made to deal and made plans on what we were going to do. Place was 159 acres with 75 acres tillable (15 acre L shaped bottom with a creek down the middle) the rest was hill sides and trees. That should have been the first clue. This farm was over run with game! The last year we farmed it was like this, If the ground hogs don't eat the soybeans and the coons and deer don't eat all the corn and the deer and turkeys don't eat or nock down all the wheat YOU COULD GET A CROP OFF THE PLACE!!!!!!
If this wasnt bad enough one fall I had the combine in his barn and had been going over it getting ready to start cutting there the next day. It was getting late and time for dinner anyway so I put things up turned off the lights and was leaving. Owner was sitting on the back deck of his house and I stopped to BS for a bit. As I was leaving he said he was waiting on someone that was coming by, I said see you tomorrow and left. After being home for a bit I found I forgot my wallet and check book on the combine ladder. Back to the farm after dinner. It was dark as I pulled up to the barn and put it in park, Got out eased over to the pole with the light switch on it(owner junk around it) and flipped the light switch on. Loud Screams came from the rafters! I had startled the 22 newly arrived peacocks that were rousting in the barn trusses. Man talk about scaring the crap out of you, After my heart rate came down and I checked my BVD's, I could hear the owner laughing his butt off at me as he walked towords me to tell me about the peacocks he just got.
If all the other critters weren't bad enough I lost the 6 acre field by the barns to the peacocks eating all the corn I planted that next spring. No crop could be grown in that field anymore because of the peacocks eating it. We only farmed the place 2 more years because of all the wild life problems. I am sure you guys out there have seen other farms like this. To this day I still don't know how you could get rid of this problem on a farm like that. Oh well, You live and learn. Bandit

Now that is when you need to call me in to harvest the wildlife - not the peacocks of course! They do scream something fierce.

You're describing my farm except for the peacocks!!

we raised peacocks and every other kinda bird you can imagine...never had any problems with them digging up seed in the truck patch...does the owner feed them or just free range?

Harvest yield is not by bushel to the acre- it is by pounds of protien in freezers and jars with a bit of pocket change from buckskin and feathers sales. Some people plant corn, peas, beans just for the critters-- and lots of them have treehouse stands within rifle range of field. Does save on picking cost, feed to cattle/hogs/chickens, then butcher cattle or hog for freezer. rough till, plant and let crops get up to critter eating stage- then harvest the critter. RN

I think they were free range, He feed them but the coons got to the food first! Bandit

The owner let a lot of guys hunt on the place, One year they got 16 big turkeys and 20 good sized deer. One coon hunter got 35 in one weekend. Bad thing was it only made a little dent in the population. Owner had golf cart and with a case of beer in a cooler would find a shady spot sit with a 22 Mag rifle and ground hog hunt, And he was good at it. I used my 303 one weekend hunting them and my shoulder was black and blue for 3 weeks from shooting so many ground hogs. The river valley behind his place an area 2 miles wide by 13 miles long nobody was ever allowed to hunt on, So the population exploded! Still is that way too. Bandit

This was 17 years ago and its still overrun according to the new owners. One time some hunters in the fall built a stand in a tree and built a 24 foot ladder to get in it. I was planting wheat and noticed about 12 deer standing looking at the ladder and the area around it, The hunter never saw a deer that fall. They made sure to go out and around his stand cause they knew it was there. Bandit