NW ND prairie bird count dropped significantly

That's unfortunate, but it was also steady growth for several years. A drop was probably inevitable?

I've always waited til the second or third week of the season to go out, doing my first true opener this year. Can't come soon enough!
 
Saw the report, as you say down significantly especially in northwest. Also mentioned a big swath south of Dickinson that had a large hail storm, like in the neighborhood of a hundred square miles. Pheasant counts should be out soon. Mixed signals from NE MT also.
 
Alaskan swamp collies said:
Saw the report, as you say down significantly especially in northwest. Also mentioned a big swath south of Dickinson that had a large hail storm, like in the neighborhood of a hundred square miles. Pheasant counts should be out soon. Mixed signals from NE MT also.
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I personally haven’t seen the report, but one of my close friends is tight with the head nd GFP biologist…he said NW ND huns down 75%, grouse down 50%…
 
Hey all, from NDGF

Our spring sharptail surveys went well. The conditions were great for the surveys, but our numbers were down 15% from where we were last year. Pretty consistently across the state. And we noticed that decline, but we are not too concerned because our numbers in 2024 were much higher than where they had been so we’re still sitting pretty well for sharptail,” said NDGF Upland Game Supervisor Jesse Kolar.

I personally think it will be a good year, not great but not as bad as it may seem.

Guess only time will tell!

Stay well my friends

Greg
 
Just saw the video that GFP put out as of 9/4…grouse down about 50% statewide from last year, huns in the NW down about 70%. Starting with pretty strong levels from a year ago, probably won’t feel too different from some of the years I’ve experienced in the 16 or 17 years I’ve been heading to ND…I can see certain areas that I hunt didn’t get the May rains that hit the NW part of the state, which is good. That video was great insofar as the candor put forward…A++! Jesse Kolar said this year was one of the worst ND has seen in the past 20 years for sharptail reproduction…
 
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Alaskan swamp collies said:
Saw the report, as you say down significantly especially in northwest. Also mentioned a big swath south of Dickinson that had a large hail storm, like in the neighborhood of a hundred square miles. Pheasant counts should be out soon. Mixed signals from NE MT also.
Click to expand...
I haven’t been on UJ for 20 months, I assume Greg Hartman and others are still posting photo essays almost daily of their results? Always interesting…👍
 
If the brood count (# of broods and # of juvenile birds) are down, it will very likely show up in the harvest survey (lower).

Young birds make up a large share of the harvest.

If you did not hunt Huns in ND in the 1988 - 1992 time frame ... you missed the crazy peak no matter what the biologist's data may suggest occurred more recently. Fall or 1991 or 1992 the Huns were all over the place. There were days we would see 20 - 30 flocks on or just off the roads.
 
BRITTMAN said:
If the brood count (# of broods and # of juvenile birds) are down, it will very likely show up in the harvest survey (lower).

Young birds make up a large share of the harvest.

If you did not hunt Huns in ND in the 1988 - 1992 time frame ... you missed the crazy peak no matter what the biologist's data may suggest occurred more recently. Fall or 1991 or 1992 the Huns were all over the place. There were days we would see 20 - 30 flocks on or just off the roads.
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Yeah, I’ve heard how crazy the Huns were in those years!!
 
gjw said:
Hey all, from NDGF

Our spring sharptail surveys went well. The conditions were great for the surveys, but our numbers were down 15% from where we were last year. Pretty consistently across the state. And we noticed that decline, but we are not too concerned because our numbers in 2024 were much higher than where they had been so we’re still sitting pretty well for sharptail,” said NDGF Upland Game Supervisor Jesse Kolar.

I personally think it will be a good year, not great but not as bad as it may seem.

Guess only time will tell!

Stay well my friends

Greg
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I always look forward to your on the ground reports!
 
gjw said:
Hey all, from NDGF

Our spring sharptail surveys went well. The conditions were great for the surveys, but our numbers were down 15% from where we were last year. Pretty consistently across the state. And we noticed that decline, but we are not too concerned because our numbers in 2024 were much higher than where they had been so we’re still sitting pretty well for sharptail,” said NDGF Upland Game Supervisor Jesse Kolar.

I personally think it will be a good year, not great but not as bad as it may seem.

Guess only time will tell!

Stay well my friends

Greg
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I don't live in an area with much for sharp cover, but there are pockets where I can always find a few. I can say I've never seen more huns around my place than I have this summer. I can't wait for hun & sharp opener this year.
 
BRITTMAN said:
If the brood count (# of broods and # of juvenile birds) are down, it will very likely show up in the harvest survey (lower).

Young birds make up a large share of the harvest.

If you did not hunt Huns in ND in the 1988 - 1992 time frame ... you missed the crazy peak no matter what the biologist's data may suggest occurred more recently. Fall or 1991 or 1992 the Huns were all over the place. There were days we would see 20 - 30 flocks on or just off the roads.
Click to expand...
Yea, my grandfather had a group that hunted a week in NC ND back in those days and they had a journal that one of his friends showed me a few years ago. They had a couple years in that time frame that they shot over 100 huns during their stay, pretty crazy to imagine that anymore. They focused on waterfowl too so it wasn't like they were chasing the huns exclusively.
 
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