In the first week of May, 2012, I traveled to a remote location in western Nebraska to hunt the elusive turkey.  I chose to hunt in one of Nebraska’s Wildlife Management Areas (WMA).  Not all WMAs provide wildlife with good habitat.  The ecological viability of the WMAs varies greatly.  Many of the WMAs in western Nebraska are waste lands, abandoned or sold by their original owners because the land no longer possesses any economic value whatsoever.  For instance, there is a WMA near Big Springs, Nebraska, that is nothing more than an old gravel pit that has filled in with water.  The pit is surrounded by a thin belt of planted trees and invasive European grasses.  I visited this “Wildlife” Management Area to see whether it contained any turkeys. It did not.  I did not see a single living creature inside its borders.  It took a real stretch of the imagination to consider this place as wildlife habitat.  Certainly the loud, incessant traffic on Interstate 80, which darted past the site less than 50 yards to the south, did not induce birds and animals to inhabit the place. Continue Reading »