Author Topic: WHERE HAVE ALL THE MUSKRATS GONE????????????????? (Read 3710 times)

NONYA · « **Reply #30 on:** February 03, 2007, 04:48:54 AM »

the guys i know who trap large tracts of private ground trap the areas every other year,rotating to let them rebuild.I shot a spotted skunk this fall while bird hunting,first i have ever seen,sprayed me and my dog and then got sprayed with lead.

Beers · « **Reply #31 on:** February 03, 2007, 05:35:00 AM »

They've moved up here..

Outside of bird species, I see more muskrats than any other type of wildlife on my property... and we've got a lot of wildlife here...

I don't trap, but I've got a neighbor who does... He puts his sets out on my property every other year, he seems to do well... I'd have to ask him for any actual numbers... He won't touch a computer, or I'd direct him over here... He'd most likely have alot to add to this thread.. (and many others here at GBO)

Bogmaster · « **Reply #32 on:** February 03, 2007, 06:30:15 AM »

There are certain areas,where rats are thriving.But these areas are spotty and few and far between.
I have several spots,where I am the only one allowed to trap.Many of these lakes and ponds were good for a certain amount of rats year after year.I haven't trapped a rat on these spots for years.But I still hunt them,and keep the beaver from running rampant.
There are very few rats,but the cattails and water still are the same.The farmer has retired,no cows,no manure and --- almost no rats.
Going to throw a curve into this discussion--it may be way off the wall---but here it is.GEESE-GEESE-and more GEESE.
Now I have stated my main belief in lower rat numbers ,in my areas--raptors.But the goose population in these areas has also sky rocketed--one thing about geese---GOOSE DUNG--They must put tons of waste in these waters and surrounding fields--what affect does this higher nitrogen levels have on rats?

??
You would think it would provide lusher vegetation--.
Remember LOON ----, maybe we have been wrong--maybe those soft silty bottoms are actually Goose----. LOL
Tom

trappnman · « **Reply #33 on:** February 03, 2007, 08:14:43 AM »

interesting thought on the geese....

will add this-

the weaver/winona marshes had their highest rat numbers and reproduction during the boom years of the Mississippi flyway

bblwi · « **Reply #34 on:** February 03, 2007, 11:09:52 AM »

To the best of my knowledge our very large waterfowl managed marshes, Horicon, Crex Meadows, Collins etc. have very large goose, duck and also rat populations. I can remember talking with the Horicon wildlife staff and desiring a healthy and stable rat population to help keep the marshes open and more suitable for waterfowl. Waterfowl will not utilize foilage tight areas and the rats would help create the openess they preffered. The geese have maintained or gained while the rats decined in these areas over the last 10-15 years.
My thoughts on species swings up and down are beginning to take on a longer term view, more similar to climate change but not in centuries but in years and decades. We may have been seeing the results during the 1990s and early 2000ths of very high trapping pressure for a decade in the late 70s and the early to mid 80s with predation also increasing and thus the decline is showing up but further out than we may be wanting to admit to. There may be more biological and species cycles than we are familiar with such as grouse, hares, lemmings, lynx, voles etc.

Bryce

Seldom · « **Reply #35 on:** February 04, 2007, 03:02:47 AM »

As I alluded to in a previous reply, the dioxin project I’m working on also includes a 5-year study of Great Horned Owls in the river’s floodplain. The study revolves around the placement of artificial nests inorder to bring in breeding pairs so that the young can be studied by blood samples, pellet collection, telemetry, etc,

I emailed the pre-doctorate, grad student that heads up the owl study and ask her quote- “When you were analyzing the owl pellets, could you ascertain the % of muskrat in their diets?” Her reply quote- “Last year muskrats accounted for 0% of the owls' diets. Weird, huh? Not a single muskrat. This year the muskrats will contribute a large percentage, but we won't know that percentage for quite a long time. We are still feathers and fur from bones. Analysis won't start until that process is finished. I'll let you know the final tally, though!”

Knowing there’s about a years’ lag in sample work, this lack of muskrat could be due to the few active nest she had that year. Last year she had 11-13 active nests which could be what she alluded to by stating she was going to find more evidence of muskrat in the diets. As soon as the female starts setting on the eggs, the students make weekly collections of the pellets beneath the nest tree until the chicks fledge.

Newt · « **Reply #36 on:** February 04, 2007, 03:15:32 AM »

Same here. I trap because I'm a TRAPPER.Not because of price. Prise just makes you more money when $ are up. And when its $are down ,you just have to tighten the old belt.

Here in the Salt marshes(meadows)-(medas in local slang) the harder you trap your rats. The more you have next year. Leave your meadows untrapped.
Your rats will die off. Seen it happen to a man whos owns meadows right next to mine.

RdFx · « **Reply #37 on:** February 04, 2007, 03:49:55 AM »

I know great horned owls will take rats if available. I have one marsh where if any rats caught in traps have any part of body floating on top of water will have talon marks where owl tried to take rat. I can imagine what the sight looked like when owl got to end of trap chain with rat in its talons. I cured that by taking rat carcasses and putting them in open areas of swamp or on top of stumps. I kept owls fed and of course anything else that came along. My torn up rats dropped dramatically to almost nothing. Each situation with any bird of prey will be differant possibly.

trappnman · « **Reply #38 on:** February 04, 2007, 07:36:17 AM »

Absolutely nothing worse, and I mean NOTHING- then having a pair of Great Horned Owls decide your trapped rats are suppertime.

You know when you have one- very distinctive.

Bogmaster · « **Reply #39 on:** February 04, 2007, 09:46:15 AM »

Great Horned Owls,learn very quickly.They come back the very next night looking for another meal,and will fish around the sides of a rat house,looking for it.
Tom

trappnman · « **Reply #40 on:** February 04, 2007, 12:36:28 PM »

on one of my early by myself lines, I had a creek by the house set up- and every night it seemed I'd lose a rat or two from owls...

I never hated a bird so much...

Buckskin · « **Reply #41 on:** February 05, 2007, 06:39:54 AM »

Wow Newt, how profound. You actually proved my point. I bet that 2 inches of rise didn't happen over night. It happens over years. That being said, the rats have time to adjust. My point was that a rise in the atlantic can't be whats knocking down the population of rats. They deal with high water all the time. And what does salinity have to do with rats? And if I was standing in a water 1 inch to the top of my boots, I would step back BEFORE it went over the top. Kind of like a what a rat would do. The ecosystem is always changing and always adapts one way or another. Doesn't matter how many trees are hugged.

Newt · « **Reply #42 on:** February 05, 2007, 12:43:40 PM »

Buckskin, You just dont get it.Do you. On our Coasts,when the water rises it changes the eco-systom.Salt moves in,some plants cant stand salt water or a higher siltinity. So they die. Other plants that like the salt,take over. The muskrats now dont like that much salt water eather. They move out or die off. The plants that like salt water thrive. But the muskrats dont or wont eat them. So they (the muskrats) move out or die.
Get IT. The muskrats CANT live there no more.
As I said this is only part of the problem of WHERE HAVE ALL THE MUSKRATS GONE?

ncmountainman · « **Reply #43 on:** February 05, 2007, 04:22:43 PM »

Heres what I believe is happening to the rat populations in the western
part of North Carolina listed in what I believe is order of importance:

1) Habitat Loss
Many of the stream banks are grown up in brush now. There is a lot less farming. the farmers used to keep a lot of the banks open with grass and winter rye in some of the fields. Nowadays there is way too much runoff from storm drains in parking lots, rooftops, streets and highways. The river and stream banks get torn up and rat dens flooded. Pollution must have at least some effect. Silt from quarries and construction smothers out secondary but maybe important food scources like clams and other mollusks.

2) Predation
There are a lot more and different kinds of predators here now. Because of tight restrictions on trapping regs mostly because of hound hunters we had fox trapping closed statewide in 1979 with only some counties reopened fairly recently. No legal season for raccoons in the western counties and low bag limits for the rest of the state. The fox numbers exploded then disease about wiped them out before the coyote showed up. The raccoon numbers are to the point where rabies is everywhere. I believe that just the presence of predators is enough to limit the rat population by reducing access to food scources. My muskrat take is always way down when there has been a lot of coon activity in the area the night before. Raptors do get some rats and help keep them down.

3) Disease
I dont have any information on disease levels in the muskrat populations in NC but I figure there could be or have been especially from the time after the fur mafket crash. It has happened to the fox, raccoons and other species here.

Back in the Eighties there was a very good muskrat population in the mountain region of North Carolina with very good populations in the best habitat and decent numbers in the marginal areas. Now there are only fair numbers in the best habitat and very few in the marginal areas. Maybe predators are the #1 problem Im not sure. The NCTA is doing what it can with proposals for regulation changes. I guess only time can tell on that.

Buckskin · « **Reply #44 on:** February 06, 2007, 03:27:42 AM »

Yeah I get that, they can't live there anymore. They move inland. Now explain to me how the Atlantic affects the rest of the country's rat population. Or were we just talking about costal populations. Maybe its global warming.

Newt · « **Reply #45 on:** February 06, 2007, 03:43:48 AM »

just on the coast.This thread is about Muskrats across the country. Not just inland

steven49er · « **Reply #46 on:** February 06, 2007, 06:05:41 AM »

The whole ECO-SYSTOM changes

I think Newt hit in my personal opine.

We can talk raptors all anybody wants but the biggest problem is the loss of habitat and change in the system in the overall big picture.

North of me in the backwaters of a river a few brothers used to take several thousand rats a year off their land SEVERAL THOUSAND. Those backwaters are no longer there. 80 percent of our historical wetlands are gone.

Raptors may have an effect on the remnant population but lets put the blame where the real blame is due.

trappnman · « **Reply #47 on:** February 06, 2007, 08:05:34 AM »

specifically, a dried up backwater will eliminate the rats

but the water level on the Mississippi pools has been the same for 60 years- and thats 1000s and 1000s of acres of habitat just in my 2 counties here alone.

Buckskin · « **Reply #48 on:** February 06, 2007, 08:07:46 AM »

Well lets hear it, who's to blame. If your going to say the sky is falling, you might as well say what or who's to blame.

How are the rat populations by you trappnman?

trappnman · « **Reply #49 on:** February 06, 2007, 08:57:11 AM »

no one is saying the sky is falling- we are just saying that, for a combination of reason- the numbers of rats is at what long time rat trappers feel are very low population levels.

here- stream rats normal, marshes have rats- but nothing like years past. Some areas of the marshes have a decent population- but not like that in the boom days (of rats, not prices)

I didn't trap any harder or set more rat traps, and got a personal best for streams.

its kind of like duck huntng- one gets a decent year- and everyone (new guys) think wow all the ducks.

and its a shame- that what is considered a lot now- is but a shadow of what a lot was. Same with the rats.

Bogmaster · « **Reply #50 on:** February 06, 2007, 09:37:46 AM »

Habitat has indeed decreased,but I have seen acre upon acre of cattail swamps totally devoid of rats.Even areas that seem to have ideal habitat---lack rats.Why???
That is the two dollar question.I doubt we will ever get a definitive answer.
Lets blame it on the --MARCH OF THE POSSUMS.
Tom

ncmountainman · « **Reply #51 on:** February 06, 2007, 09:54:27 AM »

Tom, maybe thats one the wildlife biologists need to field. If disease is the culprit there that would explain a lot. I have no doulbt that an overabundance of predators can really take down a population. I have seen first hand what happened to the quail population near my home, and the whole county for that matter when there were all of a sudden too many foxes along with housecats. I killed the one that ate the last quail. It seems that all too often we trappers are left standing there sadly watching something we cant stop.

Buckskin · « **Reply #52 on:** February 06, 2007, 10:13:46 AM »

I like the opposum theory. Damn grinners!

trappnman · « **Reply #53 on:** February 06, 2007, 03:01:33 PM »

I personally, after reading all I could about it, discount disease as anything but isolated and minor in the over all picture.

Whats left? THATs your answer.

steven49er · « **Reply #54 on:** February 06, 2007, 06:17:47 PM »

but the water level on the Mississippi pools has been the same for 60 years- and thats 1000s and 1000s of acres of habitat just in my 2 counties here alone.

Are they the same Steve? Possibly the elevations are the same but is it the same.

Pollution, more run off at times due to effiecient drainage, less silt, more silt. Heck I dont know I am no scientist. All I/we know is there is something going on. Seems to be lots of areas with what I surmise as suitable habitat that should have more rats than they do.

All I can surmise is a change in the eco-system.

Newt · « **Reply #55 on:** February 07, 2007, 01:09:51 AM »

OK-- What makes'm die off. Or be in low numbers one year. Then bounce back ,where you can make a respable catch.

Seldom · « **Reply #56 on:** February 07, 2007, 01:18:48 AM »

Speaking of dieases, there were rumors last year that our rats and mink numbers were being hurt by the West Nile Virus outbreak we have here in MI. Knowing that many of the waterfowl are carriers of the diease and it's documented that horses, cats, and dogs are suseptable to it as well, I guess it wouldn't be much of a stretch of the imagination that rats and mink could be affected. Though, I've never seen anything in publication that would substantiate the rumors or conjecture that WNV could be a cause of fewer rat numbers here in MI.

Bogmaster · « **Reply #57 on:** February 07, 2007, 02:01:51 AM »

But,if west Niles was the culprit,wouldn't those feeding on rats,and trappers handling them--be biting the dust also?
Another good reason,for wearing latex gloves when handling fur.
" Only THE SHADOW ,knows for sure."
Tom

trappnman · « **Reply #58 on:** February 07, 2007, 03:31:44 AM »

steven- I limited my comment to the water LEVEL as being the same because you are correct, other factors that HAVE changed.

Vegitation types in our area #1 change.

ncmountainman · « **Reply #59 on:** February 07, 2007, 06:48:16 AM »

Yeah, the dang grinners ate em all. I cant hardly get an apple off my apple trees anymore.