Iowa DNR ?

1

1100 Remington Man

Member
What has the Iowa DNR done for Pheasants ?
In the early 1960's to bagging just under 2 Million Birds to under 400,000 & heading lower

There are lots of reasons for this, but what has Iowa DNR done to inprove Pheasant Hunting ? More Habitat ? More Predator control ? Any regulations to help ?
What do you think would help ?
 
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I don't know how Iowa compares to Kansas, but here 97%+ of the land is in private ownership. They have to WANT to do something for birds in order for it to happen. The agency can promote habitat until the cows come home, but unless a landowner has the desire to do that work and incur that cost on his/her ground, it isn't going to happen. Much of the problem is current farming legislation and the practices that promotes. With the price of land and corn, idle ground is a scarce commodity. Your DNR is only capable of significant management on public land and that isn't going to reverse the decline. Bigger equipment, bigger fields, less idle ground, less waste all adds up to bird dogs that get few if any opportunities on wild birds!
 
Tough for a state agency to put public funds onto private land management p drifter is right until the landowner takes the initiative to manage for some wildlife it won't happen. Iowa has done a nice job in their hunter access program on private land but that is jus a drop in the bucket. I think another issue that I haven't heard much on is the genetically altered corn and beans that are now being planted and used for either ethonal or biodiesel. These fuel crops are altered for better performance in the tanks. Just wondering if these new crops have an adverse affect on the birds.......

We Have the same issue here in Michigan with a very non existent pheasant and quail population. Lots of good habitat potential but farming practices are not conducive for birds. The state is working with PF and willing private landowners to create better habitat in hopes of bring our populations up. I also think having a weak farm bill that doesn't encourage crp is hurting as well. There has to be a good trade off for the farmer to not put land into production.

Lastly we can have the best habitat in the world, but if Mother Nature reeks her havoc at the wrong time then all can be lost.
 
Prairie Drifter said:
I don't know how Iowa compares to Kansas, but here 97%+ of the land is in private ownership. They have to WANT to do something for birds in order for it to happen. The agency can promote habitat until the cows come home, but unless a landowner has the desire to do that work and incur that cost on his/her ground, it isn't going to happen. Much of the problem is current farming legislation and the practices that promotes. With the price of land and corn, idle ground is a scarce commodity. Your DNR is only capable of significant management on public land and that isn't going to reverse the decline. Bigger equipment, bigger fields, less idle ground, less waste all adds up to bird dogs that get few if any opportunities on wild birds!
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Well said!!!
 
Too many folks think that the DNR is in charge of how the state's habitat is administered. That is only the case on ground they own or lease. The private land is controlled by the owners. The DNR has the expertise to advise, the experience to design, and the ability to plant, but they don't have the key to the gate! When you have ground that is worth $4000- ? per acres, how many acres to you really think a landowner wants to idle? When corn was $10 per bushel, at 200+ bushels per acre, how many acres can a farmer afford to idle? It sooner or later boils down to economics. Unfortunately, when a farmer is making the most money is often not the time to idle ground. We got our best wildlife benefits when farmers "needed" to idle unproductive and non-profitable ground. We're not there right now.
 
1100 Remington Man said:
What has the Iowa DNR done for Pheasants ?
In the early 1960's to bagging just under 2 Million Birds to under 400,000 & heading lower

There are lots of reasons for this, but what has Iowa DNR done to inprove Pheasant Hunting ? More Habitat ? More Predator control ? Any regulations to help ?
What do you think would help ?
Click to expand...

Cut down and continue to cut down woody habitat and trees on every state owned parcel in northwest Iowa. Someday there will be prairie chickens here again. :confused:

If they were truly interested in helping, they would be planting woody cover.

I don't know who threw the dart at the timeline of the world and selected 1866 as where we want to try and be. Frustrates the heck out of me to see state employees out cutting down trees..
 
Reddog, THE PROBLEM in the remaining habitat out there is PLANT SUCCESSION! Pheasants and quail don't nest in trees, they don't brood-rear in trees, they don't frequently eat the product of trees. The only time that trees are remotely "necessary" is during the winter. If they haven't already been nested, laid, hatched, brooded, and fed, there won't be any birds to use any trees! TREES are part of the problem!!!!!!!! Most places where pheasants and quail are waning, trees are taking over!

What is lacking there is ideal nesting and brood-rearing cover that was there when 90% of the population lived on the farm. For pheasants that can be cool-season grasses, warm-season grasses, and any number of annual or perennial plants like legumes. For quail that is most often native warm-season grasses (NWSG) and forbs. The reason this problem originated in the east and has moved west is the rainfall belts. Plant succession is much faster where there is the greatest rainfall. It is exacerbated by human habitation, which ultimately limits the use of fire and chops up cover with dwellings, shopping malls, and roads-to name a few! The thing about trees is: the more you have, the more you're going to get! It's a seed-source thing!!! For a landowner to turn back the clock on his 20 -50 years of ignoring the sneaky encroachment, it may cost him as much to eliminate the trees as he paid for the land itself!

If you want our open-land gamebirds, you had best be a proponent of the axe, cow, match and plow (Leopold)! It is important that we, as hunters and conservationists, understand the ecological niche that our gamebirds thrive in and be willing to promote management that heads habitat in that direction. Habitat is always moving ahead and even for our woodland gamebirds, that can be a bad thing. Ask the woodcock and grouse guys that know their bird's adaptive niche. Canopied mature timber ain't it!!! The cutovers that were so popular 50-100 years ago have fallen silent due to plant succession. New clearcuts aren't being done because too many Americans are fond of trees and not the animals that depend upon habitats that those cutovers provided.

If our sport is to survive, we ALL need to understand what plant succession is and where our gamebirds fit into it! We need to ALL be pushing the same direction with the powers that be to get back there! To some, these shifts in plant succession are almost imperceptible. That's part of the problem. You come to Kansas and hunt CRP in 2014 and you wonder why it doesn't have the birds it had in 1986? It's plant succession. It wasn't the grass alone that was what the birds needed. It was the combination of the young grasses and the annual weeds during those first 3-7 years of development that were the "BEST" of the best! Now we have almost pure stands of prairie grasses that haven't been under the normal pressures of grazing and fire and they have evolved beyond the point of being productive bird cover.

My challenge to you is to study your favorite gamebirds habitat needs and understand what you are actually seeing on your DNR wildlife areas and why they aren't the same. In Kansas each wildlife area manager manages an average of 7000 acres. These acres are multi-species use and their time is also divided among 100 other things. They are law enforcement, they run statewide surveys, they have camping areas to manage, roads to grade, fences to maintain, buildings to maintain, boat ramps, cabins, offices, equipment, and hunters and fishermen walking in the door. They teach hunter's ed classes, give fishing clinics, conduct youth hunts, and give talks on anything and everything. They surely don't have enough time, money, or help to keep the PLANT SUCCESSION from getting away. Ask one what his budget and staff are! Do you really think that they can effectively manage a piece of ground on $5-$30 per acre? If a group of 15-30 regular users showed up at his door and took some annual leave and said: we're here to cut trees and help burn, what could he get done then?? Open for redirect!
 
Well stated Troy, often times people don't realize that the successional stages apply to animals just like plants.
 
It seems in northwest Iowa they have done a good job in removing unwanted trees. If they could convert thousands acres of brome on a lot of the public ground, we would have great hunting. I know it takes dollars and time, and they have done better seeding on new areas and reseeding existing public areas. I would like to see PF in Iowa get more involved with establishing better grasslands on our public areas that need it.
 
Often, the downfall in agency, is that we serve too many masters. Every responsibility draws time away from every other. Administrators and politicians are good are serving the current fad or directive. Managers also get derailed by big projects that benefit one wildlife group while taking time away from others. Budgets are too small. Politicians are caught up in shrinking the workforce even though we are funded by license dollars and Pitman-Robertson funds that, if we don't spend our base or allotment, we either have to turn money back or not be able to draw it down in the first place! I continually gripe that folks schedule meetings and training, etc during our burning season and other habitat sensitive periods where they ought to know habitat work ought to be our first priority. Yet it goes on. The way things get prioritized right is if we hunters call our legislators, attend the commission meetings, and drop in on department officials and make noise about getting the basics done! Volunteering can go a long way as well. If a prescribed fire takes 5 people to conduct and there aren't that many to be had, it doesn't get done. I have thousands of users on my area and don't have a single person on a list to call if I need bodies to conduct important habitat work! So much could get done if all the minds were directed toward the logical goal, HABITAT!
 
Here in northwest Missouri most of the cover is on public land or near cities. Cover is more likely to be near cities because of city people wanting a place in the country. Small acreage that is not farmed. I bought 28 acres in the country. I let the cover grow. Just let the pasture grow. There were quail there but more could have been there if the cover was managed.

If I would have known of any free assistance (broke after buying land, couldn't afford tractor), I would have jumped at the chance to establish nesting and winter cover.
 
Crossing shot, don't wait. The further gone it is, the higher the cost to get it back. The standard truth is this: a NWSG grassland cannot be maintained in the absence of fire. 28 acres isn't a very big burn. You might get help from the local fire dept, NRCS, wildlife biologist, etc. If it is still predominantly grass, let a neighbor flash graze it. Hammer it hard and get off. Then buy the beer and invite some like-minded bird guys in for a Saturday chainsaw holiday that culminates in a shade tree conflab with the beer! Involve the neighbors and pretty soon you have 160 managed acres instead of 28. It doesn't have to cost much, it doesn't have to kill you. It just has to be a continual investment or you swing away from what is valuable to our game birds!
 
I would check with your local PF chapter if you have one or talk to PF's regional biologist they may have funds and or equipment to help you. Also I know MO conservation department has or had an active prescribed fire program as I interviewed for the fire ecologist position back in the 90's, but not sure if they work with private lands. Often times the dnr have positions that split time with public and private land work and those individuals would be willing to help find funding sources. Don't wait as PD said. When we set up timber sales in aspen stands next to private land we have our wildlife biologist contact the private landowner to see if they would be interested in harvesting their aspen as well. We have had good success with that.
 
Unfortunately the land is now longer mine. If I am ever to have a larger place, I have to stick to buy low - sell high. Sold the land for 8 times what I bought it for. Needed the money for another investment.
 
I knew my stance wouldn't be popular, and I certainly understand everything everyone has said. Dickinson county is on the bottom end of the Buffalo Ridge, which is a continental divide between the Missouri and the Mississippi rivers. It is also a very powerful weather influencer . There are hundreds of wind turbines within several miles of my house. Every bird I've seen in the last month has been related to woody cover for protection from temps, snow and wind. If you can't get them through winter then you have no brood stock to nest.

With that said, I love tall grass prairies. And I despise hunting tree cover, but I understand what woody cover does for pheasants when it comes to surviving a brutal winter here.

Northwest Iowa is a different landscape than anywhere else in the state. We have thousands of acres of public land in my county alone, but that doesn't equate to incredible pheasant hunting, much to the contrary of many publications touting awesome hunting here. Awesome opportunities, maybe..


I appreciate everyone's input.. And understand the theory. Carry on
 
Reddog, everything needs to be a mix of sufficient amounts. In the winter pheasants flock up and utilize heavy cover in fairly large numbers. Without sufficient winter cover (woody or otherwise), there would be large losses. However, nesting and brood-reading habitat is a pseudo-territorial thing. You have to have it in sufficient amount for the roosters to claim territories and the hens to spread out and nest. Reasonable winter cover can be a few acres in each square mile. Nesting and brood-rearing cover needs to be much more! To some extent, it is the old "which came first, the chicken or the egg" conflict. The birds need both, but 620 acres of woods in a section isn't going to support significant numbers of pheasants. 620 acres of nesting and brood-rearing cover with 20 acres of woody winter cover, will. Further, not all woody cover is created equal. Those spread out volunteer deciduous trees don't pass as winter cover. Often they are better raptor perches, coon nests, etc than they are protection.

One of the common problems with many of our public land wildlife areas here, and I suspect there, is that they are often centered on riparian corridors. Many are associated with reservoir properties. The problem is that this set up lends itself to rapid plant succession and dominant predator communities. If trees can have their feet in water, they have the adaptive advantage over upland type of habitats. The cost of maintaining habitats in this physical site will be higher than it would be to maintain upland habitats in the uplands. We often don't get a choice in this. It is take it or leave it. You are right, in more northern extremes of the pheasant range, woody cover plays a larger role. However, the % cover of that habitat type on the ground doesn't have to be huge to give the protection needed. The design and management of those acres is important. Placement too requires some forethought.
 
And that's exactly my problem. We are primarily prairie environment here We don't have 620 acres of trees on any section in the county. It's tearing out the 20 acres that we have on 620 acres of WSG that gets my goat. Tear out trees, and plant 90 foot osprey pole right dead center in our largest natural prairie in the county in hopes that an osprey takes up residence. Tear up 120 acres of Cayler Prairie and farm it.. Not food plots, but a rotation of corn and beans with 100% harvest in the fall. Does this improve habitat, or the bottom line of the bank account? I don't know, but it's stuff like this that makes me shake my head.
 
Yeah, on the surface that seems out-of-context for game management. Don't know what the management focus is, but that doesn't sound like a gamebird priority.
 
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