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In Iowa's case - it is pretty simple. Where there is habitat, and quite a bit of it, the birds flourish. Where it is very isolated and not much habitat, the birds are harder to find, but still around. Even with the ups and downs of weather, etc., the places that have high-quality habitat have a...

You are definintely the first I have heard having these issues. I don't think I've seen any PF articles explaining how to keep all the pheasants from eating all of your seed before it germinates..

That is amazing - good problem to have I suppose. I would be happy to see just one pheasant digging in our food plots!

Was a bit nervous - but I figured even if I killed some switch, the benefits of killing the canary would far outweigh it. Worst case, some of these barespots should sport some ragweed or other forbes that the pheasants enjoy!

Here is what the project looks like post-spray this Spring. Almost all of the taller grass is switch - the brown stuff was primarily the RCG that was sprayed in late April. Pretty happy with this so far - will keep everyone posted on how it progresses through the year. Hoping this knocked the...

I know the current program we are looking at pays about $50 less per acre than it would have last year. Only 3 tiers instead of 5 now, no 10% inflation adjustment, and no incentive for seeding type, or something like that.

Grappling with the same decision now. I tend to side with remy on this one - would rather take a (potentially) smaller payment that is locked in for longer than hope these programs are offered in the future, and also at a higher rate.

How much fertilizer do you use? Do you rotate food plot sights at all, let any go to second year, etc. ? Looks like a great seed bed.

Update on this - will try and get some pictures in the coming weeks. The switch did quite well last year, though there is still plenty of reeds canary grass mixed in. We did a burn in early April, and 2.5 weeks ago I hit the whole thing with glyphosate (the cool season RCG was greening up like...

We got our corn plots planted last weekend, about 6 acres in total. Will be planting about 4 acres of sorghum either next week or the week following. Thinking about trying something different for a pre emergent this year, possibly atrazine + s-metalochlor combination.

Will use some Prowl on the sorghum - nothing on the corn (other than a one or two shots of glyphosate )

Just got our food plots disked a couple weeks ago. Was planning on going back out to plant last weekend, but unfortunately we got all kinds of rain and it was too wet. Hoping to get corn planted this weekend, and possibly sorghum. Will need to disc again, as I'm sure there are all sorts of...

I've always hypothesized that there is a correlation or relationship between pheasant density and glacialized areas. Primarily, the most recent glacier (Des Moines Lobe) tends to overlap pretty closely with the best bird numbers in the state of Iowa. There are obviously other factors at play...

Does anybody know if access to calcium grit is plentiful throughout Iowa, or is it potentially a limiting factor for pheasant reproduction? I have no idea..

For a spring burn, I have been mowing in the Fall, to give a chance for the clippings to decompose, etc. I worry that if I mow close to burning (since some of the clover is pretty tall), that I may end up with dead debris on the firebreaks that could potentially provide enough fuel to carry the...

I would think that strategy is probably just as good or better. It seems like disked ground that grows to weeds is about as good of brooding cover as anything you could possibly plant - and its all there in the seed bed for free!

Was just using that as an example. So think One square field totalling 75 acres. That 75 acre field is dividend (by firebreaks) into three smaller 25 acre fields. Each year, we burn one of the 25 acre fields. Does that make sense?

Curious to get others thoughts on firebreaks. On one hand, we all know that prescribed fire is critical to maintaining high quality pheasant habitat (primarily for nesting/brood rearing), so fire is almost a given in any well thought out management plan. We have our CRP acres on a 3 year burn...

If you send me the coordinates I can go check it out for you ;)

The real question is, how many birds did you see ???