More restrictive mining laws were put in place in 1976, and much of Stooksbury's time and funding goes into reclaiming lands damaged before that period.

"We're getting federal funds to go back in and reclaim pre-law coal mines," he said. Reclaiming land and working with the timber and coal companies to protect wildlife habitat are all part of the management deal for Stooksbury, who oversees Sundquist WMA's 80,000 acres and the 2,500-acre Cove Creek WMA on Norris Lake in addition to Royal Blue's 50,000 acres.

"We worked with the coal companies and changed their re-vegetation plans to benefit wildlife," Stooksbury said. "We require them to have wildlife as a major focus in their plan and we work with them on this.

Our most sought-after species is grouse," Stooksbury continued. "There seems to have been a region-wide reduction in numbers over the past few years. However, with the significant increase in timber management, we expect to turn that around and have an increasing grouse population here for the next several years. We saw good brood production this year. We had a maturing forest, and harvesting on the total property (all three WMAs) now is about 2,000 acres a year," providing grouse with the early successional forest they need for nesting and brood habitat.

"Over the years, squirrel hunting has lost a lot of popularity, and this is as good a place as any in the state to hunt squirrels," Stooksbury said. "We've had good to excellent mast three years in a row. Because this area was mainly timbered forestland, there wasn't really a lot of open areas for wildlife, except for mine sites that were not conducive to rabbit populations," Stooksbury said. "Now we are seeing ever-increasing rabbit populations."

TWRA Lands Management biologist Jim Zimmerman in Region III said that squirrels are the most plentiful small game on Catoosa WMA's 80,000 acres.

"They're all over," Zimmerman said. "Catoosa is predominantly forested and pretty much everywhere on the area we have squirrels. It's more about where you find food -- if you have a lot of acorns, you have a lot of squirrels.

"We have grouse, but quail populations have been down for 10 or 15 years and they're really at a low point," Zimmerman continued. "We are right on the southern edge of the grouse's natural habitat, so we don't have a lot of grouse, but it is not uncommon to see grouse. We have a lot of area for grouse. We saw a few more grouse this past winter. We'll just have to see what happened last summer as far as production went," Zimmerman noted.