god of the uplands

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wisturkeyhunter

New member
If you were in charge of all things to do with upland birds in Wisconsin what would you change?

Lets keep it to upland game birds pheasant,woodcock and grouse. Management,laws,and anything else you can think of.

Just thought it'd be interesting to see your guys thoughts.
 
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I'd get rid of all the state stocking of pen raised pheasants. It's a waste of money that is only a temporary fix to the problem. The problem is low numbers of wild birds because of a lack of habitat. We'd have a few training areas like bong for people to train their dogs but they would have to put out their own birds.

I would increase the pheasant stamp to $50, and all the money would go into habitat,buying land,and transplanting truely wild birds from other places in extreme cases where there just isn't any wild birds. I know thats expensive but in the grand scheme of what we pay for all our hunting gear $50 a year ain't much and there is a ton of work to do.

There IS wild pheasants in this state where there is good habitat we just don't have a lot of the good habitat.

I'd also have a non resident grouse stamp $50 too. Majority of that money would go toward the management of sharptail grouse. I'd like to see these native game birds of the prairie thrive in Wisconsin. We have some in huntable numbers but I gotta believe it could be better. I know that most of the money from that stamp would come from out of state ruffed grouse hunters but why not take advantage of our state being a destination state. Enough people come here from other states to hunt ruffs that we don't need residents to pay too.

Woodcock season would have zones like waterfowl. Southern Zone needs to extend through the end of November. Usually about the time woodcock arrive in good number down here in the southern part of the state the season closes and the early part of the season they are few native w'cock around here.
 
I'd also have a non resident grouse stamp $50 too. Majority of that money would go toward the management of sharptail grouse. I'd like to see these native game birds of the prairie thrive in Wisconsin. We have some in huntable numbers but I gotta believe it could be better. I know that most of the money from that stamp would come from out of state ruffed grouse hunters but why not take advantage of our state being a destination state. Enough people come here from other states to hunt ruffs that we don't need residents to pay too.



Not a good idea considering some of the smaller towns would suffer since out of towners contribute a lot to the local economies.
Me, hell id pay what ever fee there was.
As far as pheasant hunting goes, its not non-residents following the bird trucks around shooting just released birds out of the parking lots.
 
On the grouse stamp you might be right but I think $50 isn't going to change guys minds who are driving from out of state $50 isn't even a full tank in most trucks and a lot of guys drive across several states to hunt here.

You are right about who Shoots birds out of the bird truck but there wouldn't be a bird truck in my world and everyone would pay for that stamp residents too.
 
Change

I need a little time to think this one fully through but I initially am thinking about a different kind of stamp. The main reason we are losing habitat is because of current farming practices. If we are going to get that land back we need to create an incentive for private land owners to bring back those buffer strips. I am thinking that we could in addition to previously mentioned increased pheasant stamp we should add a WIHA stamp (not sure the cost on this one yet. We would need to do some math on number of licenses sold and number acres per year we would want to add to hit habitat benchmarks). I personally would be more than happy to purchase a WIHA stamp to get additional upland access in Wisconsin. If we could partner this concept with Pheasants Forever we might even be able to get more bang for the buck out of each acre.
More to come but I want to think it out before I barf out anything else without thinking.
 
I realize your post is "god of the uplands"...but the reality is that changing the habitat isn't ever going to happen. So you charge $ 50 for a habitat stamp. Even if you had 100,000 people purchase one, that's just $ 5 million. That might sound like a lot, but how much land in tracts large enough to support birds would that buy? The development that has split up the land previously home to wild birds isn't going away.

We also in Wisconsin have a serious predator problem that would need to be addressed.

Finally, I'm sure not a WDNR fan, but their put and take program provides an opportunity for those of us that choose not to travel out of State or have access to private land with a hunting opportunity. Without that program, the choice would be to spend $1,000 and join hunt club to shoot 20 birds.

To each their own, but that program has provided me with countless hours of enjoyment in the field with my dogs. There are a LOT of things WDNR does that they should stop wasting money on (i.e. CWD research, releasing elk when we have an unchecked wolf population, etc) but the pheasant put and take sure isn't one of them.
 
I agree 519

How about not allowing hunting for pheasants on Wednesdays and releasing birds on that day - I think one of the biggest problems with pen raised pheasants are the guys who "follow the trucks"
 
chuckles - I hate those guys that follow the trucks as well. Some of the grounds have 2pm closures, which does help out. Those that don't, make it a pheasant shoot and not a pheasant hunt.

I'm with you to close it one or more days a week, the only problem is that it would concentrate pressure on the day it opens back up. I also like the idea of one bird/day on stocked grounds.

Truck chasers are at the same level with me as groundswatters. :mad:
 
Chuckles said:
I agree 519

How about not allowing hunting for pheasants on Wednesdays and releasing birds on that day - I think one of the biggest problems with pen raised pheasants are the guys who "follow the trucks"
Click to expand...

Perhaps there may also be aviary predators that "follow the trucks." Their logic..." If we don't get them them damned winged ones will!"
...just a thought
Habitat,habitat,habitat...
 
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