The first half of the 20th century was prime for small game hunters in South Georgia. Farming patterns created good conditions for food and security for quail, doves, squirrels and rabbits.
Compared to earlier and later eras, farms were small, due to division of estates among numerous children and the financial dynamics of agriculture. Fields were small, often divided into smaller plots by fences and inevitable fence rows in order to manage crops and livestock.
The “open range law” for domestic livestock was central to farming practices. Cows, hogs and, for decades, sheep, sought food wherever they could find it. Farmers protected their crops with fences, split-rails, then hog wire topped with barbed wire.
Most farmers lured their animals out of the woods daily with small feedings of corn. When a new crop was harvested, they turned their animals into the field, often leaving much residue, even planting foods for them. Livestock provided income after cash crops had been sold. To facilitate this process, fields were subdivided by fences, confining animals to one area while later crops were being harvested.
Livestock feeding on corn, peanuts and velvet beans deposited food on the ground, food for quail and doves. On good years, this food lasted until everything got plowed under in preparation for the next year’s crops. Fence rows provided nesting places and security for quail. Doves chose trees in fence rows as observation posts.
Open range was good for small game. After their time in the fields, hogs found food in the woods, such as acorns. Cows need grass for grazing. Therefore, farmers burned open woods to remove the previous year’s overgrowth from native grasses, especially wiregrass, timing this just before spring growth began.
In addition to providing grazing for cows, fire cleared the ground so that surviving mast and seeds were available to birds and promoted the growth of seeding plants that fed quail and larks later in the year. Some quail were piney woods birds, finding all the food and shelter needed in the pines and nearby small streams. Their security was in clumps of wiregrass from which they exploded like a rocket when flushed. Some found that unnerving. It took a wide ranging bird dog to locate these birds and an in-shape hunter to keep up with the dog.
Although most virgin timber pines had been cut earlier, only the largest trees had been harvested, leaving many large trees to produce mast and shelter. Doves nest on mid-level limbs of pines where there was open space for them to land while feeding their chicks. Fox squirrels, much larger than their gray “cat squirrel” kin, build big nests high in tall pines, safe from most predators. In August, they start to “cut burrs,” feeding on the mast in pine cones by slicing away the cover with their teeth.
In the deep woods, timber cutting had been limited to ancient cypress and the largest oaks. Oaks, some still large and often hollow at some level, poplar and gums remained as a haven for cat squirrels, some of which also found homes near corn fields. Burned woods and fence rows were good for rabbits, important quarry for many hunters until an outbreak of “rabbit fever” (tularemia) greatly reduced hunters' interest. Carried in the fur, it is contracted while dressing the rabbit and it causes serious illness.
In this era there was no “big game” in most places. Deer and turkey could be found only in the coastal region and in large forested areas along major streams. One reason is loss of habitat. Another is the fact that free range domestic livestock were serious competitors, eating their food and driving them out. Hogs ate the acorns that were their usual source of protein. Cows ate the deer’s browse food — grasses, weeds, bushes and tree buds. Although flesh-eating screw worms decimated the sheep — which were more vulnerable than cows and hogs — by about 1920, these had already done their part in driving out the deer.
This good time for small game faded quickly. The open range system died by legislative action due to too many close encounters of the worst kind between tourists and cows, bad public relations. Some Georgians had discovered that it was more profitable to pluck tourists than pick cotton.
Prosperity led to demand for lumber, leading first to heavy timber cutting and then to timber plantations, acres of pines thickly planted in rows. These are the environmental equivalent of deserts, too dense to permit other growth. Harvested before they produce cones and mast, they are replaced quickly by more of the same.
Small plots are inimical to mechanized farming. Fence rows disappeared. Livestock was closely confined, except around pastures. Fields are wide open. Soon after crops are harvested, any corn or beans that escape the combine is buried by harrows. Critters have to hurry to grab a few meals.
They face serious problems, especially quail. Fire ants attack the sitting hen or attack, kill and eat her hatchlings. Cattle egrets — normally insect eaters — find that a scampering quail chick is a heartier meal. Removal of livestock from woods allowed them to grow into impenetrable tangles, not quail habitat.
Deer are back. Introduced by sportsmen’s groups in the late 1040s, they proliferated and now destroy crops and cars. Turkeys have been introduced successfully. We also now have coyotes, almost as unwelcome as fire ants.
Those were the days, my friend.
Roger G. Branch Sr. is professor emeritus of sociology at Georgia Southern University and is a retired pastor.