GPA's

niceshot

New member
Do you hunt on a GPA? Has it suddenly changed for the worse over the past two seasons? Am I crazy to think that they are being farmed for profit? Where is the money going? Why would GF&P destroy pheasant habitat? What is going on? Does anyone know or care?

Example: I hunt pheasants on a GPA that had gotten bigger (purchased and donated land) and better (shelter belts and food plots) for the past 20 years. Then last summer, for the first time ever, someone strung up an electric fencer and grazed cattle and shoulder high switchgrass that held pheasants for 20 years is now mostly dirt and sticks. Then last fall, the brome grass needed for early nesting, was mowed and baled. I naively thought some bureaucrat in Pierre wanted to establish native grass, but now its hundreds of acres of corn:eek: on a GPA surrounded by oceans of corn?
 
That doesn't sound good. I saw a few GPAs in 2012 that had 1/2 mowed for emergency haying, but never anything like you described. Do you think maybe it went out of the program? I know sometimes the CREP tracts get taken out for whatever reason.
 
GPA's will occasionally be grazed for a year in order to improve the habitat long term. And sometimes a food plot gets planted. But what you described sounds like a piece of land that is no longer a GPA, and I have never heard of that happening since the taxpayers typically own GPA's and WMA's. Maybe a land swap occurred?
 
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