Sproule Conservation Site
An Island of Wild in an Agricultural Sea ►
by Lorne Fitch, P. Biol.
The late J. C. Sproule, an avid upland bird hunter, must have had his own crystal ball that foretold of declines in habitat in southern Alberta. He purchased a quarter section of land south of Rolling Hills in the 1950s. Sproule didn’t do it to farm, but rather to assure himself of bird hunting opportunities.
brother would take me there in the 1960s to hunt birds. It never dawned on us to get beyond hunting the roadside ditches, since the action was so good within steps of the roads and often on the roads. Anything else, including buying land to hunt on, would have seemed unnecessary.
The area around Brooks became a mecca for pheasant hunting, as primitive flood irrigation had created massive seepage areas, thick with willows and cattails. My
In that era, securing land for future hunting might not have seemed like a smart idea. That didn’t deter Sproule. He and his hunting buddies built a small cabin they called the “shack” on the land. It had few amenities, including no indoor plumbing, as Sproule felt that would attract the wives and this was
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to be an exclusive male retreat. The hunting buddies clearly bonded with the place, buying it from the estate following Sproule’s death in 1970. They formed a foundation and kept up with taxes, water rights, and did some occasional hunting until the early 1980s when age started to catch up with them. By this time, irrigation canal rehabilitation and modern farming practices had started to catch up with the country, eliminating huge tracts of former upland bird habitat. Sproule’s foresight was becoming more and more obvious.