Fairfield County Fish & Game Club

 Grooms Its Land Holdings To Encourage Wildlife

By Andrew Gorosko

John Blanco walks briskly across the forest floor, down steep slopes, through soggy wetlands, and over hillsides girdled with the remnants of stone fences. Fallen russet oak leaves crunch under his footfall.

Mr Blanco, wearing brilliant orange twig-patterned deer camouflage, moves quickly, but carefully, amid the thousands of red maple, hickory and beech which stand throughout the 300-acre Fairfield County Fish & Game Club property in Sandy Hook, making his way along a network of broad trails before approaching a clearing in the late succession forest.

Club members have put in about 150 man-hours of labor, so far, to create the clearing where they hope their work will alter the forest ecology to attract grouse and woodcock, which are considered prime game birds in the New England woods.

The club’s undeveloped property is an island of wilderness in the increasingly developed suburban landscape. The property is home to deer, wild turkey, squirrel and other small game. Pheasant is stocked for hunting.

The Halfway River, which defines the border between Newtown and Monroe, runs along the property. The club stocks the river with rainbow, brown and brook trout for sport fishing in separate areas where the fish are taken, and in other areas where the fish are caught and released.

The property has sites for skeet and trap shooting, and sporting clays.

“We have a love for the natural…We hope to continue to preserve this as a natural forest located in metropolitan Connecticut. We want to keep the open land,” said Mr Blanco, who is the fish and game club’s steward of the land, serving as its land management chairman.

It has taken him five years of artful persuasion, but Mr Blanco’s efforts to convince club members to undertake a woodlands management plan to rebalance the natural habitat of the forest is now underway.

Many club members did not want any trees on the property cut down, so it took a while to convince them of the value of selective thinning, Mr Blanco explains.

Mr Blanco is entering the second year of a 10-year project to create a habitat designed to attract grouse and woodcock, and incidentally, migratory songbirds, to the sweeping forest tract in the southeastern corner of Newtown.

By selectively thinning several sections of the mixed hardwood forest, the club will allow more sunlight to reach the forest floor, promoting the growth of native grasses. The grasses would provide seed, which would serve as natural feed to attract the desired game birds to the area.

Increased sunlight in the forest is hoped to promote the growth of aspen and alder, which would alter the chemical balance of the soil, making it a better environment for earthworms, whose presence attracts the hungry long-billed woodcock.

Grouse are now scarce in the area. Larger than quail, grouse are speedy, highly maneuverable birds, which fly low among the trees when roused from stillness, providing sport for hunters. Because the birds’ natural color blends with the background, even seeing grouse becomes a challenge.

As club members thin out wooded areas of undesirable growth, they collect brush and place it in piles to create “coverts,” or thickets, which provide protective, cover for small wildlife. 

The club designates certain isolated dead, hollow trees as “snags,” where birds can find shelter.

The fish and game club has designated about 120 acres of its 300-acre parcel for such forestry management. Through the project, the group hopes to convert sections of its woods from a “late stage” to “early stage” forest.

Besides fostering suitable habitat for game birds, the forest thinning will reduce forest fire hazards, Mr Blanco said.

Mr Blanco notes that if the fish and game club were not preserving the tract in its natural state, the property might otherwise be developed for new homes.

To familiarize himself with what it takes to create habitat for woodcock and grouse, Mr Blanco participated in a state-sponsored forest wildlife education seminar known as “The Coverts Project” at the Yale University Forest in Norfolk.

The club hired a forester to develop a 10-year forest management plan, which the state has approved, and club members have now begun implementing on the land, which the club has owned for almost 100 years.

In exchange for the free forest education program, participants, such as Mr Blanco, become “coverts project cooperators,” acting as a source of information for people with questions about forest management. For free advice on forest management, Mr Blanco, a Brookfield resident, may be reached at 203-775-5961.