Lousy Monday hunt

ditchparrot19

ditchparrot19

Member
The special hunts at the government-run wildlife areas on the first Monday of the season are usually decent, at least by ultra-low California standards. However, with the exception of the first 10 minutes, today sucked!

I went to Delevan and had one in the bag at 8:10 a.m. -- my 12 1/2-year-old Lab busted one out of a tule stretch just out of parking lot C where I've never seen a bird before. I was thrilled with that and I thought I was in for a good day despite the lousy field reports.

Wrong!

I never came close to shouldering the gun again. I saw one other rooster -- running like hell about 75 yards in front of me along a levee road. The road made a blind turn shortly thereafter and the bird was never seen again. The Lab also pushed up three hens from the blind area -- which only gets hunted on this one day every year -- and none of them would've been in shooting range if they'd been roosters.

I hunted the Lab for the first 2 hours, which is my limit for him at his age. I spent the rest of the day running my pointer and setter through all that good-looking upland stuff on the south and southeast sides. They covered just about every inch of it and neither ever locked up on point.

I left at 2:45 and my bird was the 13th checked in. By that time, almost all of the 50 hunters had departed.

A friend of mine -- a very serious, veteran hunter who can seemingly always find birds if they're around -- spent the morning at Sacramento and never saw a pheasant of either gender.

The numbers from opening day at the refuges were pathetic. Only 33 birds were taken at Gray Lodge, 27 at Little Dry Creek, 20-something at Sacramento and 15 at Delevan.

This whole deal is almost over, folks, and it won't be coming back once it's gone. These days, it takes a serious fluke of nature or a major management accident (a bunch of water that gets away, a fire, etc.) to produce even a mediocre hatch on lands that are dedicated to wildlife.

Too bad, but it is what it is.
 
The bird numbers are off for sure but we've also seen two of the driest springs possible back to back. The scenting conditions so far have been terrible and I think the dogs are missing birds. Greylodge's upland habitat is declining rapidly and needs to be opened up and I'm sure the same goes for a lot of our WA's. With all that said I don't think it's almost gone, it can come back but not if we throw in the towel. Let us upland hunters be the squeaky wheel for once. I've been trying to start a PF chapter in my area for 3 years now but can't find any hunters that want to do anything but complain about the lack of pheasants and hunt a preserve, its a sad deal imo. I'll be out there moving birds regardless of how bleak it seems and if I can find a handful of guys in my area who feel the same maybe we can start the change.
 
quail hound said:
The bird numbers are off for sure but we've also seen two of the driest springs possible back to back. The scenting conditions so far have been terrible and I think the dogs are missing birds. Greylodge's upland habitat is declining rapidly and needs to be opened up and I'm sure the same goes for a lot of our WA's. With all that said I don't think it's almost gone, it can come back but not if we throw in the towel. Let us upland hunters be the squeaky wheel for once. I've been trying to start a PF chapter in my area for 3 years now but can't find any hunters that want to do anything but complain about the lack of pheasants and hunt a preserve, its a sad deal imo. I'll be out there moving birds regardless of how bleak it seems and if I can find a handful of guys in my area who feel the same maybe we can start the change.
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Yeah, the poor spring conditions definitely have a huge effect on the bird population. That's part of the current problem, though -- we need precise amounts of rain at exactly the right times to produce even mediocre hatches, and those conditions won't occur often. It's not a case of dogs missing birds up here this year -- the birds flat-out aren't here to be missed.

Trust me, some of us upland aficionados in the northern part of the state have been "squeaky wheels" for a very long time. There simply aren't enough of us, though, and our numbers are continually shrinking due to attrition. I'm not throwing in any towels, but I am a realist in regard to the situation. I've watched it decline steeply since 1998 -- the year that nearly 2,000 roosters were harvested at Gray Lodge. This year, the number likely won't hit 100.

The DFG doesn't give a damn about the upland conditions at Gray Lodge or anywhere else. They're simply not going to lift a finger to aid a non-native species, and besides, as far as the wildlife areas go, all of the money is in ducks. They won't even accept volunteer labor in order to help pheasants, and that I know for a fact.

PF is a great organization, but we can't expect a great deal of help from them out here. They've got their hands full dealing with all the issues in the middle of the country.

It's a simple catch-22 -- without greater bird populations and hunter access to them, there's no way to recruit and retain more upland hunters. And without greater numbers of upland hunters, there's no way to make enough noise to get anybody to pay attention.

I wish there was reason for optimism, but that light just continues to dim.
 
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Years ago, I've been told, those Monday pheasant hunts were as close to a South Dakota-type wild pheasant hunting experience as you could find in California in terms of mind-boggling bird numbers and hot action.

I signed up for the Monday morning hunt in Sacramento, but the staff at the hunter check station wasn't super enthusiastic about the prospects given the all-time harvest low on Saturday (13 birds total I was told on opener) and the fact that they had seen very few pheasants all year on and around the refuge.

I agree with Quail Hound that the hunting conditions -- dry, hot and dusty -- are probably the worst possible for the dogs and some wet weather at some point during the season could help all of our odds.

I think it's sad that we're losing the wild pheasant hunting tradition in this state along with the birds. You just don't find many wild pheasant hunters anymore. I don't think biologists and others will ever put a ton of energy into wild pheasants. Not only are the birds non-native but I'm told California's climate is too hot and dry in general to support a large population of pheasants.

Irrigated agriculture changed the game when it first arrived in the state and created artificially ideal conditions for wild pheasants when combined with the habitat that used to exist -- but does no longer.
 
From what I've seen the biggest limiting factor on our public land is nesting and brooding habitat a fortunately for us pheasants aren't the only birds who use them. Lots of ducks are upland nesters as well as song birds, the turkeys df&w seem to love so much and quail to some extent. I've seen first hand DU doing upland nesting work on our WA's and NWR's so why not PF? PF/ QF has hired Dan Connelley as their west coast rep so why wouldn't they be interested in helping? They waste money every year planting useless milo and corn plots on public land and I've never harvested a bird with a stitch of either in their craw. Imagine the good a few 20-40ac fields of wheat on these lands could do, and not just for our non native pheasants.
 
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quail hound said:
From what I've seen the biggest limiting factor on our public land is nesting and brooding habitat.
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No question that's the biggest factor. Pheasants' situation is somewhat unique, though, in that they need a constant supply of insects for the first six weeks of their lives -- that's absolutely all they can eat. To get those, they need the broad-leaf plants that will attract the bugs, and they need those plants to be in very close proximity to heavy cover that the birds can use as protection from predators. Wheat won't do jack to help that situation, just as rice doesn't.

Creating a situation like that in present-day California, where there's no longer any set-aside ground to speak of and where irrigation has become so efficient that not a drop of water is ever wasted, is very labor-intensive. In the absence of regular spring rains, the ground where those plants are must be flash-flooded every 10 days or so. It can never completely dry out or the insects will be gone and the baby pheasants will be screwed.

Sometimes a close-to-ideal situation happens naturally -- such as when the Fremont Weir overflowed several years ago due to a tremendous amount of rain -- or by accident. However, you simply can't count on those incidents occurring.

You're absolutely right about the corn and milo strips -- adult birds don't need that stuff for food. They can and will eat just about anything that produces a berry, nut, seed or head of grain. Starvation of adult birds is never the problem.
 
That's very true. The df&w perfected brood strips in a study years ago they performef at Grizzly island but I guess was to water intensive to be done on a larger scale, I'll see if I can dig up the study. I've thought of ways that would help the water issue but in turn would makethe broods strips a bit more labor intensive.

How would you guys (and other hunters you know) feel about say a $20 dollar pheasant stamp to help offset costs for habitat work?
 
quail hound said:
That's very true. The df&w perfected brood strips in a study years ago they performef at Grizzly island but I guess was to water intensive to be done on a larger scale, I'll see if I can dig up the study. I've thought of ways that would help the water issue but in turn would makethe broods strips a bit more labor intensive.

How would you guys (and other hunters you know) feel about say a $20 dollar pheasant stamp to help offset costs for habitat work?
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Yeah, I'm extremely familiar with the brood-strip program, as I know one of the guys who designed and implemented it very well (the other was a very old man at the time and has since passed on). The one who's still around lives just down the road from me, outside of Gridley, and I hunt with him both here and in Montana. He's also my frequent bass tournament partner.

I'd pay the $20 gladly, and I'm sure a thousand other people would, too. That's still only $20,000, though, and that won't go too far in the habitat-improvement realm. If you spread it over 20 properties, that'd be only $1,000 each.

What's needed is a major grant or donation that runs well into the millions.
 
How about $20,000 dumped into just one or two areas to show people the difference habitat can make and give them something to get excited about? All I'm saying is that there has to be something done to get the ball rolling. Irrigated farmland is to valueable, it has to start on state or federal lands.
 
One last idea (not really, I have a ton). In reality brood strips will artificially increase pheasant numbers even in times of drought like we are in now so lets try something easier. I know we've all hunted fields that are so thatched they serve no purpose, till them black and let them start new. Lots of sod forming grasses are showing up in fields, till, burn, spray etc. Arundo is wild, you can even find it at our refuges and its one of the worst envasives there is and needs to be controlled. Timely tilling can produce decent brood strips if our weather is even a little cooperative etc... A little management can go a long ways and from there we canleave it to the mercy of mother nature.
 
At this point, I just don't know how you get anybody with any authority to take any idea seriously. Pheasants are so far down DFG's priority list at this point that they're not even on the list, and there aren't enough of us enthusiasts to worry any of the politicians into doing anything.

Here's an example of how bad things are: My U.S. Congressman, Doug LaMalfa, is a big landowner out in Richvale, where they had that ridiculous pheasant co-op up until this year, claiming they were supplementing their "strong population of wild birds" with the ones they planted. A decade ago, when I was still in the newspaper business, I did an interview with LaMalfa (he was a State Assemblyman at the time). We were just chatting afterward and he told me the wild pheasants on his land were almost completely gone -- this was 2005, at the latest. He wasn't at all happy about it and had looked into ways to try to remedy the problem, but hadn't discovered anything that was at all promising for the situation that he and his fellow landowners were in, short of tearing out all of their rice and donating all of their time, money and labor force to producing pheasants.

He's a very influential dude with a hell of a lot of money, and he has access to all sorts of information that the rest of us don't. Nonetheless, he was dumbfounded and likely still is.
 
I'm sorry but the LaMalfa thing is rediculous! The first year I hunted richvale we were moving more wild birds than any public I hunted that year (3yrs ago). We were moving 10-20 hens and harvesting 2-3 wild roosters a day. The problem there is no different than anywhere else, nesting and brooding cover is all but non existant! For him to say they would have to sacrifice all their land to help pheasants is rediculous but 40 acres in each section sure would go along way but like I said, irrigated land is to valueable.

I could increase pheasant pops at Mendota NWR (my closest pheasants) with my Masey 30, 2 bottom plow, a harrow drag, a couple bags of seed and a few weekends a year.

I'm sorry if I seem arguementative but this subject really bothers me and the people who say they don't know how to fix it (the powers that be) are either extremely stupid or they think us pheasant hunters are.
 
No, it's I who must apologize. That's 15 minutes from my front door, and numbers like that don't jive with anything I've experienced or even heard of out there in at least the past 20 years. According to the guys with the wildlife biology backgrounds, they're not possible under normal circumstances on ground that's covered in rice and farmed fencerow to fencerow, as the vast majority of Richvale is.

But those same people will also be the first to tell you that flukes of nature happen all the time. Sometimes they can explain them, and sometimes they can't.

Unfortunately, such flukes are now what we're dependent upon to have decent pheasant hunting. Every now and then, Mother Nature throws us a bone.
 
We hunted that place hard though and hit cover no one else did. We didn't even hunt the planted areas most of the time. We pushed quite a few deer, including some nice bucks, that first year that disappeared the next also. Last year there I think we flushed 6 or 7 hens total. Sad but hey we flushed more hens on public in one field sunday so its enough to keep the dogs and I interested. Hitting Greylodge tomorrow, maybe we'll shoot a rooster, maybe not but its better than working that for sure.
 
If you remember that was the year we had really good rainfall too. The hunting was awesome that year for everything. Mtn quail, valley quail, gambles quail, chukar, everything wad great that year.
 
What kind of cover was there other than rice? I ponied up for that thing one year and regretted it after the first weekend. Nothing but rice, rice and more rice, and I detest walking up and down checks.

There were some small patches of heavy stuff on the edges of some of the fields and a few of the ditches had a bit of cover, but that was about it. I drove around and at least looked at just about everything on the map, but none of it looked good from a wild-bird perspective.

Sure, there were plenty of planted birds. But I can go to the club in Corning and pursue better pen-raised birds in cover that's a lot more varied and interesting.
 
Gray Lodge is a perfect situation to try different things because it has an East and West side with separate permits that allow for the success rates to be differentiated. They could do brood strips on one side and not the other. Allow turkey hunting on one side and not the other. They take all the information they now get with their permit system and it goes into a cardboard box never to be seen again except to use the zip code info to determine if the wildlife areas are a local hunter benefit or if it draws hunters region and statewide.
The area managers at the state areas aren't enamored with turkeys as suggested which is the reason they allow them to be hunted. I'm pretty sure they'd be happy if there weren't any on the areas.
As far as Milo and Sudan Grass, they provide escape cover that is still huntable unlike Blackberries. I've shot a number of roosters in the WA's Milo and have seen more shot by others. Since it is irrigated in these dry years it may provide the invertebrates chicks need during their first critical weeks.
Although production is definitely in the dumps, during hard times it's hard not to think that because I did poorly there's nothing there. Bunches of guys and bunches of dogs just shove what few birds there are around. I shot a rooster on the opener in a spot where 5 guys with 6 dogs just walked out of. They had 4 Labs and 2 GWPs and swore there weren't any birds. I took my single dog and shot the bird while they were less than 100 yds. away and walking to the parking lot. I'm not saying I'm a fantastic hunter or my dog is a bionic pooch but she's a Lab that hunts close to me and we are very quiet. I shot it in Milo.
I'm sorry to hear that Chet Hart is no longer among us.
 
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I hunted Richvale for several years and ALWAYS found wild birds, including the last year it was open, although I think I only moved a total of two wild birds that last year, one hen and one wild rooster. But I agree the hunting got less interesting as time went on because it became a game of walking ditches, which is not that interesting and the wild patches of cover became scarcer.

Way too much clean farming in Richvale now. That's more of the problem than even the rice crop. Richvale has always been rice -- but they used to let the fields rest and rotate before modern agriculture came along with its fertilizers and nutrients and pesticides to keep those rice fields in perpetual production. And pheasants can't live in water so the flooding also limits their habitat and makes them easier targets for predators.

Here's an idea for LaMalfa. How about a bill to prohibit the mowing of any roadside ditch in spring? That's some of the best pheasant habitat left and yet the farmers always mow and spray that cover away, particularly during nesting season. I believe Minnesota passed a law to prevent any mowing of roadside ditches/canals until at least August when pheasant nesting season is mostly over.

I would gladly pay for a wild pheasant stamp. Also, whatever happened to the pheasant hunting opportunities on the Fremont Weir and the Delta Islands? Both of those hunts provided some really good wild pheasant hunting -- and now they no longer exist.
 
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Sporting Days said:
Here's an idea for LaMalfa. How about a bill to prohibit the mowing of any roadside ditch in spring? That's some of the best pheasant habitat left and yet the farmers always mow and spray that cover away, particularly during nesting season. I believe Minnesota passed a law to prevent any mowing of roadside ditches/canals until at least August when pheasant nesting season is mostly over.
I would gladly pay for a wild pheasant stamp. Also, whatever happened to the pheasant hunting opportunities on the Fremont Weir and the Delta Islands? Both of those hunts provided some really good wild pheasant hunting -- and now they no longer exist.
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I agree that clean farming is a big issue but farmers are a funny bunch in many ways. I worked for a county government and as part of my duties I had to deal with issues involving farmers and ranchers. When I'd meet with them and after the business was done I'd try to always ask them two questions. "Why do you mow and spray the margins of your land" and "Why do you keep all your old farm equipment and park it next to your house?"
The answer to the first one was uniformly because it looks rank having overgrown ditches and makes their operation look poorly run. They'd get whispered about or kidded at the restaurant they all meet at for breakfast. It's very hard to change that point of view. I never met a long haired farmer or rancher.
Fremont Weir has actually gotten bigger as far as the hunting opportunity. It used to be just between the weir and the river with the whole site only available during the special hunts they had. Now because of poor production they don't have the special hunts and the whole area is open all the time. The periodic flooding depresses any population growth there. It also gets hunted a lot.
Delta Islands doesn't do special hunts anymore due to poor production and changes in the crops being farmed. They used to have alfalfa around the area that was very attractive to nesting birds with the result that the first cutting was made just when the hens were on the nests. They and their nests were destroyed. I understand now that it has gone over to rice production from corn with new checks and no habitat and still no birds. At the end of those hunts the birds shot were almost exclusively leftovers from the youth hunts.
Huge amounts of the wildlife area's budgets goes to paying the bills submitted by the local mosquito abatement districts. For example, take the time to ask to talk to Andy Atkinson, Gray Lodge Area Manager, about his budget and how it is allocated.
 
calamari said:
Huge amounts of the wildlife area's budgets goes to paying the bills submitted by the local mosquito abatement districts. For example, take the time to ask to talk to Andy Atkinson, Gray Lodge Area Manager, about his budget and how it is allocated.
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Just to be clear, that mosquito thing is limited to the state-run WAs. The federal refuges (Sacramento, Delevan, etc.) have no such issue to deal with.
 
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