CRP grass field - plow it up or leave alone

[TripleR]

Too many fence rows??? Loss of birds around here is usually due to removing those so the big tractors/combines can keep going in a straight line. How's your owl/hawk/eagle population? They are all federally protected (unless nobody is watching). Coyotes are expanding everywhere. You undoubtedly have wolves now too because a handful of people in the country think it would be nice to see one (they won't because they don't get out in the woods at those times of day).

Boy I screwed that one up somehow, meant to say loss of fence rows and lack of diversity. We are some of the few property owners who have kept fence rows as our properties are not all that big, Many of our neighbors have sold to large farmers who dozed out fence rows, tree lines, small stands of trees and such. We don't have wolves, but plenty of bobcat and coyotes. Hawks and owls are also a factor I am sure.

Quail populations in my area have been declining since Pheasants were introduced in the late 70s by Missouri Dept of Conserv. They pushed the quail out and then died off themselves. About the time quail started back Missouri Dept of Conserv introduced Turkeys. They also competed with the quail and populations declined again. They then stabilized at a very low number but you could find a covey if you looked hard enough. Then Missouri Dept of Conserv. introduced Bobcats to reduce the ridiculously high population of Turkeys. Well that pretty much wiped out the remaining Quail coveys. So in a matter of 40 years Missouri Department of Conservation totally jacked up the wildlife population base here. Now we are overran with Deer and Turkeys and not much else. Our tax dollars at work.....

I can't seem to get much good information on game management from MDC; maybe they just don't know. We are lucky in that on our main property we are surrounded by land owners who have taken a lot of land out of production, planted trees, food plots etc, but as a whole it is just not enough in the end, we can't get the variety needed.