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Pollmann: Crisis looms in pheasant country
The loss of Conservation Reserve Program acres, native grassland and heavy wetland cover due to drainage (above) is putting a strain on South Dakota's pheasant habitat and the future of pheasant hunting. / John Pollmann / For the Argus Leader
Written by
John Pollmann
From a distance, the winding stretch of cattails didn’t look like much. Just another slough nestled between rolling hills of corn and soybeans.
But come the first flakes of snow and nights of single-digit cold, that oasis of thick cover was a lifesaver for the pheasants that roamed the countryside near my childhood home outside of Dell Rapids. And like any good pheasant hunter, where the birds went, I followed.
It was a long, chilly walk from the gravel road just to reach the waterway, and once I got there, the real work began. Clouds of frosty breath appeared with my every labored step as thick grass and cattails pulled at boots and calves.
With thighs and lungs burning, beads of sweat formed under my blaze orange hat despite the bitter cold. Any pheasant hunter who has done the same, however, knows that it was a labor of love.
Pheasants that had once been scattered across the section were now concentrated in these cattails, and I powered through the cover knowing that I was only a step or two away from watching another rooster thunder from the snow, cackling his disapproval over being ejected from the warmth below.
More roosters were missed than shot from the slough, but that winding length of snarly cover was a memory-maker for me. Taking a drive past it this fall, I was saddened to see, then, that the entire stretch of cattails and grass had been plowed under. Manicured banks of black dirt and a freshly trenched waterway remained in its stead.
If you’d take your own drive through countryside anywhere east of the Missouri River, you’d be hard-pressed to find a township that isn’t full of the same – acres of cattails and heavy grass (what game managers call thermal cover) or small tree claims and shelterbelts gone, likely forever.
These small chunks of habitat are all critical for maintaining a healthy pheasant population, but their demise isn’t receiving the publicity garnered by South Dakota’s declining enrollments in the Conservation Reserve Program (227,000 acres off the books in 2012 alone), not to mention the 2 million or so acres of native prairie that have gone green-side-down in the last two decades.
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John Pollmann is a freelance writer who reports on outdoor issues for the Argus Leader. Send feedback to argus-sports@argusleader.com
Pollmann: Crisis looms in pheasant country
The loss of Conservation Reserve Program acres, native grassland and heavy wetland cover due to drainage (above) is putting a strain on South Dakota's pheasant habitat and the future of pheasant hunting. / John Pollmann / For the Argus Leader
Written by
John Pollmann
From a distance, the winding stretch of cattails didn’t look like much. Just another slough nestled between rolling hills of corn and soybeans.
But come the first flakes of snow and nights of single-digit cold, that oasis of thick cover was a lifesaver for the pheasants that roamed the countryside near my childhood home outside of Dell Rapids. And like any good pheasant hunter, where the birds went, I followed.
It was a long, chilly walk from the gravel road just to reach the waterway, and once I got there, the real work began. Clouds of frosty breath appeared with my every labored step as thick grass and cattails pulled at boots and calves.
With thighs and lungs burning, beads of sweat formed under my blaze orange hat despite the bitter cold. Any pheasant hunter who has done the same, however, knows that it was a labor of love.
Pheasants that had once been scattered across the section were now concentrated in these cattails, and I powered through the cover knowing that I was only a step or two away from watching another rooster thunder from the snow, cackling his disapproval over being ejected from the warmth below.
More roosters were missed than shot from the slough, but that winding length of snarly cover was a memory-maker for me. Taking a drive past it this fall, I was saddened to see, then, that the entire stretch of cattails and grass had been plowed under. Manicured banks of black dirt and a freshly trenched waterway remained in its stead.
If you’d take your own drive through countryside anywhere east of the Missouri River, you’d be hard-pressed to find a township that isn’t full of the same – acres of cattails and heavy grass (what game managers call thermal cover) or small tree claims and shelterbelts gone, likely forever.
These small chunks of habitat are all critical for maintaining a healthy pheasant population, but their demise isn’t receiving the publicity garnered by South Dakota’s declining enrollments in the Conservation Reserve Program (227,000 acres off the books in 2012 alone), not to mention the 2 million or so acres of native prairie that have gone green-side-down in the last two decades.
Page
1
2
3
Next
John Pollmann is a freelance writer who reports on outdoor issues for the Argus Leader. Send feedback to argus-sports@argusleader.com
