Wildlife can damage your farm

By Michael Carter

The Ohio Depart­ment of National Resources Divi­sion of Wildlife has a vast range of duties as it relates to agriculture.

Pos­si­bly one of their biggest involve­ments in this busi­ness is pro­vid­ing qual­ity ser­vice to farm pro­duc­ers expe­ri­enc­ing wildlife dam­age to their crops.

Wildlife not only build their homes in fields, they also use the farm­ers’ crops as a main food source.

Wildlife —from as small as chip­munks to as large as deer — can be blamed.

“Deter­min­ing the cause of wildlife crop dam­age may be easy. Con­vinc­ing the own­ers of the crops to accept the eval­u­a­tion is often more dif­fi­cult,” accord­ing to the crop dam­age man­ual from the ODNR.

“I have the most prob­lem with rac­coons,” said Bill Frankart, who farms 4,800 acres in Seneca, San­dusky and Huron counties.

“They are a very waste­ful ani­mal. They will take down a com­plete stalk and only eat a small por­tion of the crop before mov­ing on to the next stalk.”

Hunt­ing is a valu­able solu­tion to curb the wildlife crop dam­age problem.

How­ever, the reg­u­la­tions on firearms and the cost of ammu­ni­tion com­bined with the back­lash of the gov­ern­ment and groups like P.E.T.A., hunt­ing, as well as firearms, have come under direct scrutiny.

“I have def­i­nitely seen a huge increase in the rac­coon pop­u­la­tion,” Frankart said.

“The price of pelts used to be very high, but with groups like P.E.T.A. get­ting involved that has changed.

“The price is just now start­ing to go back up, but we have missed or skipped a hole gen­er­a­tion of rac­coon hunters and that has caused a prob­lem,” he commented.

Rac­coons and wood­chucks cause the major­ity of their dam­age on soy­beans when the crop is in a very young and in its veg­e­ta­tive stage. It is also more con­cen­trated near or around woodlots.

“I have seen as many as eight to 10 rows of beans destroyed all the way around wood­lots,” Frankart said. “I think deer some­times get a bad rap for all the crop dam­age. Don’t get me wrong they do dam­age but not as much as the raccoons.”

Sev­eral fac­tors tie into the increase of small-game ani­mals. Pos­si­bly one of the biggest fac­tors is the cost of hunting.

The price of ammu­ni­tion is at an all-time high and con­tin­ues to rise. There are sev­eral rea­sons for this increase, some tan­gi­ble, some not as much.

Mate­r­ial and labor costs in the United States are a big fac­tor. The price of cop­per and brass, major com­po­nents in ammu­ni­tion, both have increased heav­ily in the past sev­eral years, while fuel prices to deliver prod­ucts is also at a record high.

These fac­tors are only one part of the prob­lem, however.

With yet another school shoot­ing in Con­necti­cut and the Pres­i­dents promise to impose higher and stiffer reg­u­la­tions on guns, prices of weapons and ammu­ni­tion are only going to con­tinue to increase.

“I have always allowed hunters on my prop­erty in hopes that they will thin out the rac­coons and wood­chucks,” said Frankart.

“Most of the time those inter­ested have been younger hunters, but with the cost of ammu­ni­tion at such a high cost even that is get­ting harder to find.”

Gary Bauer, who owns two Christ­mas tree farms in Nor­walk, Huron County, said the pain of wildlife dam­age as well.

“Deer are a big prob­lem for us at our farms,” he said in an inter­view in December.

“The bucks like to come in the early spring and rub the vel­vet off their racks on our trees. Christ­mas trees are very del­i­cate if they get cut or nicked at all they die. So these bucks come in and can kill hun­dreds of trees in a very short time.”

With the pos­si­bil­ity of stiffer reg­u­la­tions on guns and ammu­ni­tion, ODNR’s prob­lem of wildlife crop con­trol dam­age will only increase.

“I have def­i­nitely seen a rise in dam­age due to ani­mals,” Frankart said.

“I am not sure what the answer to this prob­lem is.”

Posted by Rob Treynor on Feb 4 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.