New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

Wow. What colors we've had this past ten days or more. Even the oaks are now coloring up. Often the oaks color up after the maples and others have already shed their leaves. I was worried the drought would force the trees to turn early and then slough their leaves within days. I was wrong. Thankfully. So our colors have lasted and lasted and with the oaks now coloring up on top of everything else this view is more spectacular than ever as far as I'm concerned. Even the showers of last night didn't force the leaves to fall. And just as I am writing this the sun is breaking through turning the notch up considerably on the colors. Now some leaves have indeed fallen and my lawn is a testament to that. But most are still on the trees. Looking at my diary from last year it says that most of the leaves, even the oaks were off by October 27th. One heavy rain is going to change things significantly.

Turkeys and geese abound. I had to get my Mom to the dentist by eight this morning. I pointed out a flock of 40 or so turkeys right near my house as we headed off and a huge flock of geese was nearby as well. If you are a hunter in NH these really are the best of times

For instance when I first started working for NH Fish and Game, some 40 years ago next month, there were none of these resident geese. Only an occasional high flying V of geese could be seen each fall, except for some that settled in late fall on Great Bay.  Now we have an estimated 40 or 50 thousand resident geese. As I recall in the NH deer population was pegged at around 40 thousand in the early 1980's by Fish and Game. The most recent Fish and Game estimate of deer numbers puts them around 110 thousand. Some 25 wild turkeys released in 1975 in western NH as grown to another 40 thousand plus birds. Early on in the early 1980's as the first black bear biologist we estimated we had around a thousand bears and my research showed that number was declining. Fortunately in 1985 we convinced the legislators to hand over the reins of season setting to Fish and Game and we began recovering the bear population. To my surprise this summer I read the current estimate is 6,500. There are now more bear over a wider range in this state than there has been since the 1700's.

And no doubt with the return of beaver to this state by the 1960's there is more duck habitat so duck numbers are up from then. In fact the bag limit for ducks as I can remember was four per day when I first started duck hunting when I turned 16 in 1966. Now the bag limit is six a day.

These really are the best of time to not only be a hunter in New Hampshire, but while you are enjoying this fantastic foliage you've got a pretty good chance of seeing more wildlife than ever.