Sad!!!!

What a waste of time and money. PF know's what is needed to bring back the Pheasants in this area but lets state leed. PF spent its time and money to acquire more property then sits on its thumbs. SAD!!!! http://www.idahostatesman.com/2013/09/12/2755520_fish-and-game-pheasant-group-try.html

What's your problem with PF? You have to do somthing to figure out what is going on. Then you make corrections and go from there. If you don't know what the problem is, you can't fix it.
 
Yeah, I hate when an organization buys up land for conservation and public hunting reasons.:rolleyes:
 
This article makes the point that even where Idaho has sections of great habitat, the birds are not there in the the numbers they should be.

This seems to be the case even within areas where predators are kept "in-line" so to say.

It's becoming more apparent this population issue that a number of "pheasant states" are facing may have something to do with genetics. A good does of "new" wild blood from the right sub-species throughout a states wild pheasant range could do our birds a lot of good.

If not birds directly from China, than an exchange of wild pheasants from state to state may give them the jump they need.
 
What's your problem with PF? You have to do somthing to figure out what is going on. Then you make corrections and go from there. If you know what the problem is, you can't fix it.
It doesn't take 3 years to figure out Pheasants have a hard time! By the way IDFG farms mud lake you would think they would know to let the hens finish nesting before baling. With 20,000 acres probably twice that if you add the BLM to the north the best IDFG and PF can do is a study that has been done a number of times in other states? Any Ideas why? http://www.pheasantsforever.org/page/1/PressReleaseViewer.jsp?pressReleaseId=16510
 
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What's your problem with PF? You have to do somthing to figure out what is going on. Then you make corrections and go from there. If you don't know what the problem is, you can't fix it.
Not a problem I'm 4 PF changing direction. There's no better place than mud lake. 1. History of wild Pheasants 2. large public area 3. large farms in sparsely populated area. 4. DEMAND! thousands of Pheasants hunters drive by this area on way to the Dakotas more than welling to "PAY TO PLAY". Come on PF get in there an show the farmers how to make money raising wild Pheasants, a Mine SD. If you wait for the state nothing well change. PF you need a WIN here is the place.
 
It looks like we know the answer! Half of the hens were mowed down in the first alfalfa cutting, this isn't news anywhere else. With new strains of alfalfa, maturing early on and repeatedly, it's a death zone for sitting hens. If you could get farmers to mow with a sickle bar mowers and a side delivery rake, instead of swathers, and disc mowers, or at set aside some nesting "trip" crop to allow some to succeed. We are fighting an uphill battle. On private ground, the state, or federal grounds I don't see why we can't manage the resource to allow successful nesting, at least there. It mightmake an impact to research alfalfa strains, and harvesting techniques which can be implemented elsewhere. Now that would be worth supporting! Taking wild hens which were successful nesters and aclimated to the area, 45 miles to document the technicolor death seems at least counter productive. So imagine the loss in Idaho, and contrast that to North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa. Loss of nesting habitat is alot more crucial than anything else in my opinion. The birds find a swamp, a feedlot, and few farmstead hedgerows, to survive, forage in fields for waste grain and grasshoppers. I thought the idea was habitat, sound like Mud Lake has it, but it's completely mismanaged for pheasants, I would suspect that, they stock 16,000 birds, also a dead bag loser.
 
Swathing at 40 MPH does not help, that's for sure! Watch it every tear here in the flatlands of OK.
 
It looks like we know the answer! Half of the hens were mowed down in the first alfalfa cutting, this isn't news anywhere else. With new strains of alfalfa, maturing early on and repeatedly, it's a death zone for sitting hens. If you could get farmers to mow with a sickle bar mowers and a side delivery rake, instead of swathers, and disc mowers, or at set aside some nesting "trip" crop to allow some to succeed. We are fighting an uphill battle. On private ground, the state, or federal grounds I don't see why we can't manage the resource to allow successful nesting, at least there. It mightmake an impact to research alfalfa strains, and harvesting techniques which can be implemented elsewhere. Now that would be worth supporting! Taking wild hens which were successful nesters and aclimated to the area, 45 miles to document the technicolor death seems at least counter productive. So imagine the loss in Idaho, and contrast that to North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa. Loss of nesting habitat is alot more crucial than anything else in my opinion. The birds find a swamp, a feedlot, and few farmstead hedgerows, to survive, forage in fields for waste grain and grasshoppers. I thought the idea was habitat, sound like Mud Lake has it, but it's completely mismanaged for pheasants, I would suspect that, they stock 16,000 birds, also a dead bag loser.
Old and new , Sadly its not mismanaged it managed just like the people in charged or trained to do. Non native Pheasants or just like noxious weed and hunters should be happy with stocked birds. In Idaho I feel the biggest mistake we made in the last 30 years is the training of the people we put in charge of the upland bird programs of both IDFG and PF. What type of training does a CEO of a computer chip company or frinch fry company have and need? Pheasants are a crop and pheasant hunting is a business really a "industry" from guns, shells trucks, dogs , dog boxes,cloths est, est. It depends on the production of wild Pheasants to survive! Basic supply and demand. more pheasants = more hunters money = more conservation of all wild life. Putting conservation first has been the death blow! You need people in charge that think and get paid for PRODUCTION! Not ones that move up by doing studies and writing papers and the publication of there studies . When a person donates to PF they think "more " Pheasants" but the people we have in charge think more conservation of NATIVE things as they been trained to think. Read the PF release and see if it say's a thing about PRODUCTION of Pheasants. Is this what the PF supporters want? or do they want PRODUCTION? http://www.pheasantsforever.org/page/1/PressReleaseViewer.jsp?pressReleaseId=16510
 
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Old and new , Sadly its not mismanaged it managed just like the people in charged or trained to do. Non native Pheasants or just like noxious weed and hunters should be happy with stocked birds. In Idaho I feel the biggest mistake we made in the last 30 years is the training of the people we put in charge of the upland bird programs of both IDFG and PF. What type of training does a CEO of a computer chip company or frinch fry company have and need? Pheasants are a crop and pheasant hunting is a business really a "industry" from guns, shells trucks, dogs , dog boxes,cloths est, est. It depends on the production of wild Pheasants to survive! Basic supply and demand. more pheasants = more hunters money = more conservation of all wild life. Putting conservation first has been the death blow! You need people in charge that think and get paid for PRODUCTION! Not ones that move up by doing studies and writing papers and the publication of there studies . When a person donates to PF they think "more " Pheasants" but the people we have in charge think more conservation of NATIVE things as they been trained to think. Read the PF release and see if it say's a thing about PRODUCTION of Pheasants. Is this what the PF supporters want? or do they want PRODUCTION? http://www.pheasantsforever.org/page/1/PressReleaseViewer.jsp?pressReleaseId=16510

The native movement is in full swing, no doubt. Even to the point, for a shot while (a few years back), I began to feel as if PF began distancing themselves from the Ring-neck pheasant due to his "non-native" status. It seems they've pulled/are pulling away from that shift---or maybe it wasn't there in the first place and it's just me. Who knows?

Nevertheless, they're a conservation organization focused on conserving habitat to benefit wild pheasants and other wildlife. This in turn PRODUCES pheasants.

As for native vs. non-native habitats, Pheasants Forever promotes both. For example, this link regarding nesting cover discusses warm seasons and cool seasons. http://www.pheasantsforever.org/page/1/nestingcover.jsp

Anyway, I may be missing your point wess, but as far as I've seen PF sites produce birds. Sometime it takes some time, but when all is said and done there's birds.

Nick
 
The native movement is in full swing, no doubt. Even to the point, for a shot while (a few years back), I began to feel as if PF began distancing themselves from the Ring-neck pheasant due to his "non-native" status. It seems they've pulled/are pulling away from that shift---or maybe it wasn't there in the first place and it's just me. Who knows?

Nevertheless, they're a conservation organization focused on conserving habitat to benefit wild pheasants and other wildlife. This in turn PRODUCES pheasants.

As for native vs. non-native habitats, Pheasants Forever promotes both. For example, this link regarding nesting cover discusses warm seasons and cool seasons. http://www.pheasantsforever.org/page/1/nestingcover.jsp

Anyway, I may be missing your point wess, but as far as I've seen PF sites produce birds. Sometime it takes some time, but when all is said and done there's birds.

Nick
Nick, In Idaho for the last 30 years all the people in charge of both IDFG & PF "paid" have been biologists and for the last 30 years Pheasant hunting has gone straight down hill. We can not change IDFG but we can change PF. There are plenty of conservation organizations but there's only one that say's PHEASANTS. Nothing well change in PF as its controlled by the thinking of "Scientists" and theses scientists are not about to give up there strangle hold unless PF supporters demand IT! This is why DEMAND so out weights SUPPLY. WE need a organization that puts the Pheasant hunting industry FIRST. To do this you need business thinking and trained people in charge.
 
What your saying is if Pheasants Forever becomes a "pheasant hunting org." instead of a habitat organization pheasants would benefit more-so?

I'm assuming here, so correct me if I'm wrong, but your suggesting that most/all funds go to land acquisition than turned over to a state's Department of Natural Resources?


Nick
 
I'm assuming here, so correct me if I'm wrong, but your suggesting that most/all funds go to land acquisition than turned over to a state's Department of Natural Resources? NICK, I sure would not but that"s EXACTLY what PF did. After years of tying up PF staff and the expense of buying the farm PF turn's right around and sells it to IDFG. Do you think they deed restricted the farm that IDFG must do habitat improvements that directly benefit wild pheasants or there production. HELL NO. Any privet company CEO would have been fired for doing something like this that did not directly benefit its stock holders. But PF well turn around and spend more money patin them selves on the back and advertising how many acres they conserved because they cant talk about increase in wild pheasant population or hunting lic sales or amount of hunter money spent in the county. I feel PF and more impotently its members must realize that as hunter numbers decrees the less money there well be to "conserve" its a dead end street. Don't get me wrong I'm glad this farm got added just not the fact PRODUCTION was not PF's main issue. If a coach or CEO had this many loosing seasons what would you do? The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different out come.
 
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This article makes the point that even where Idaho has sections of great habitat, the birds are not there in the the numbers they should be.

This seems to be the case even within areas where predators are kept "in-line" so to say.

It's becoming more apparent this population issue that a number of "pheasant states" are facing may have something to do with genetics. A good does of "new" wild blood from the right sub-species throughout a states wild pheasant range could do our birds a lot of good.

If not birds directly from China, than an exchange of wild pheasants from state to state may give them the jump they need.
Mud lake would be a great place to start. How do you get a state IDFG to try?
 
Mud lake would be a great place to start. How do you get a state IDFG to try?

There's definitely something going on with wild pheasants in many areas of the country besides habitat loss and predation. I think we're getting close to a solution or solutions though.

A few months back I spoke with the good folks who are working on the Illinois wild pheasant study at Illinois State University Urbana-Champaign. They are now at the point of writing up a report on their findings/discoveries and recommendations for the ILDNR. Maybe, once a solution is (hopefully!) found, the findings will become nationwide??? We'll go from there I suppose.
 
What I have around me is basically 10,000-15,000 acre "islands" of wild pheasants and I've often wondered about inbreeding eventually becoming a problem. The two areas closest to me are around 40 miles away from each other with no chances of dispersal between the two. I'm convinced that swapping some roosters from one refuge to the other would help out both populations.
 
Here's the problem:

Like almost any large organization, PF is, to a large degree, self-preservationist and wanting itself to continue to exist and get bigger. If there were a permanent fix to pheasant habitat and all became well in "pheasantland", PF would layoff salaried employees, progressively shrink and eventually fold. Oh, they might re-invent PF as simply a magazine and banquet FUN-raiser(NOT fund-raiser) but it would become much different.

The ONLY way to permanently solve the habitat problem is to purchase 60 million acres of land for about $200 billion and put it to grass. Done deal. PF gone. If PF had a 5-7 year plan to get this done, then drastically downsize/re-invent itself, I would be MUCH more inclined to support it more than I do.

But working endlessly on fickle, temporary Band-Aid projects while the island of pheasantland continually shrinks is sad, if not pure folly.

Eventually we have to ask this question of PF: "Are you working to PERMANENTLY restore pheasants to near-soil bank numbers in pheasantland and when do you expect to get this done? 3 years? 5 years? 10 years? WHEN?

When I'm going to build a house, I don't just talk endlessly with my builder, year-after-year, decade-after-decade about what's needed, how nice my living room will be, etc. etc. blah, blah, blah. NO - we come up with the plan and a firm schedule for completion of the job. Done. I'm in the living room having my coffee and reading my paper.

When will we all be in pheasantland with habitat and numbers reasonably restored? Completion date please.

My definition of "pheasantland" is"

Large parts(15-75%) of these western states including: SD, ND, NE, KS, IA, MT, MN, CO.
Perhaps some fringe areas of WY and ID.

Forget about the eastern states that formerly held pheasants for our grandfathers. They are GONE for sure. Let's not waste ANY more time and money on them. The above western states are where pheasant hunters go to hunt pheasants. Period. Concede the east to people population, development, and the deer/turkey hunters.

If we can piss away over $1 trillion on being a "nanny" to the middle east for the last 20 years, SURELY we taxpayers can spend a mere $200 billion on a HARD ASSET like land that benefits the air, water, soil, hunting and rural economies. A NATIONAL TREASURE that benefits many.
 
I'm a pheasant hunter and I've never been to any of those states to hunt. If PF told me, "Forget about your state, its done, save your money for a yearly pilgrimage to 'pheasant land'." I guarantee they would never see another red cent of my money.
 
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