From Brookings County Wildlife Federation on ...

[sdviking]

As to the last part of your post I am 100% sure p.o.p. (politics opinions perspective) influence season lengths and bag limits.

As to the retired biologist - As I have posted before- the whole environment has changed and almost none of it has been beneficial for pheasants. I thought it was interesting the biologist ascertained that shelterbelts were the key to winter survival. Shelterbelts and stands of trees found around farmstead have been being ripped out for years. His idea of many rows surely included fruit or berry producing tres / shrubs. Fruit berries nuts always attract insects so there are 2 food sources.

Fewer cattle , hogs ,sheep ,chicken around the decreasing # of farms/ranches. Cattle scratching around in stubble fields do a lot for wildlife

Farming fencerow to fencerow has even gotten worse as there is often no fencerow.
Farming right to the edge of sloughs mean the sloughs drift in worse. We seem to get wetter(more rain) falls so those sloughs have nothing but ice for a base. Tiling has added to some and eliminated other cover spots.
Pesticides,herbicides, and on and on.

Well there is some hope. Our conservation district planted 700 acres this fall and had to stop after the ice storm in early December. Most of the acres we planted were buffers around sloughs and we did a lot of squaring off of fields because farmers don't like to come back with their big planters to plant an extra 10 to 20 feet. We planted 28 contracts that were anywhere from 8 to 30 acres. Many of these plantings were around 2-4 low areas or sloughs in a 160 acre field. I think this is good news. We have an additional 600 acres to do this spring if the sites are not underwater. Small producers are planting a lot more trees, but we don't get many tree plantings from the larger producers. Hope that changes. Right now we are seeing most of the pheasants in tree belts with 2 or more rows of evergreens or the larger sloughs. All CRP is snowed in and doesn't provide much help. But pheasant numbers are a lot better than previous years. SDviking

 

[Weimdogman]

And now is the time to be in touch with nrcs office about trees.