SW minn flooding

gim said:
I generally agree with nater's assessment.

Use last year as an example here. Areas that received massive flooding had lower road side counts; whereas areas that received rain but NOT floods had greatly increased road side counts. Rain is good - it creates moisture and lush habitat and a surplus of bugs for birds to eat and grow quickly.

But a monsoon at the wrong time has devastating effects, and its very possible (if not likely) that this occurred in some localized areas mentioned above.

I can say with relative positivity that in nearly 25 years of hunting here in MN that wetter springs often produce more birds than ones that are riddled with severe drought.

The one aspect that I can concretely agree with is that mortality among adult pheasants the past two winters has been nearly nonexistent. When I was turkey hunting this spring, there were a lot of adults around. These fake winters are certainly reducing the amount of birds that succumb in the winter months.
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I saw the same thing turkey hunting/scouting. Nearly got run over by a herd of 30+ hen pheasants in March while scouting a WPA. Then when I hunted it in A season, was completely covered up in birds (none of them turkeys, unfortunately).
 
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I've now had rain 26 of the last 40 days at my house in SC MN. This is concerning. Flooding/ponding have not been significant issues over that period, but that's a lot cold and wet for the chicks. I did see 8 broods on my morning coffee drive yesterday, with a good mix of age and brood size. But I did see a handful of solo hens with no chicks, which is never good this time of year. I'd call it a mixed bag overall.
 
Nice data! Could you customize it to early July if you wanted to? The critical time period would probably be more like June 10 - July 10.

Nearly 12 inches by Willmar?! 😲
 
That's accumulated total precip from June 10 - July 14, including only stations that reported 90% of the time.
 
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Saturday morning coffee drive through the heart of where I hunt: 31 hens, 16 with broods, 15 without. That's not a great sign heading into late July. On the flip side...that's still 16 pheasant broods, and there are a pile of adult roosters out there.
 
Thanks for the report, @nater I talked to a farmer whose land we hunt on in western MN, and he said he has seen a lot of young pheasants that he would say are 5-6 inches tall right now, and some are even a bit bigger than that, so he thinks it was an early hatch, which has helped a good number survive the rains and storms we’ve had. He also said there are tons of adult birds around, so he is optimistic for us, which makes me optimistic too! 12 more weeks!
 
Apparently some areas around Marshall received 5 inches of rain in a very short period of time last Friday.
 
Let the dogs out in the dark this morning, and they came back soaking wet from the dew. Figured the birds would flock to the gravel at sunrise, and I was right--I saw 26 hens with broods in the local stretch in an hour of driving. Only 7 hens without broods. Really good average brood size, with only a couple groups below 6-7 chicks. Even the late re-nest broods with chicks unable to fly had at least 5-6 still alive. The other area I drove last weekend had a lot of 1-2-3 chick broods. I would guess I saw at least 200 birds this morning.
 
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