Iowa's pheasant plan?

W

wispringer

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I heard some scuttlebutt earlier that the state of Iowa was planning on increasing their efforts in improving pheasant populations. I would imagine that would mean improving habitat. Has anyone heard any plans on how they are going to approach it? My own humble opinion is they are going to have problems unless they can convince the big Ag outfits to participate. Am I off base here? Just curious. I hunt very close to the Iowa/Minnesota border. If you go just north into Minnesota and follow I-90 east/west in the winter it looks like a white moon with very, very little habitat for birds. It's not much different when you go south into Iowa. They are very efficient in farming every speck of soil
 
I notice the same thing. And am from that area as well. Surprisingly it has had good improvement since I was a kid and the bird #'s reflect it. It has been great hunting for a while now. I heard the winter knocked the heck out of them this last year but they should bounce back. And your right, it will be hard to get land enrolled in CRP there. My cousins are some of those big Ag guys and that doesn't happen. Grain price is too good and they have been paying 5 grand an acre for farms, so the profit margin is less and they want crop. The DNR will have to buy places less desirable and improve them. Trouble is it is all good crop land there mostly. I say DNR pull tab boxes for wild life. Those big Ag guy's will fund it that way.:D It is a smart idea really (Pull tabs at all the pubs.)
 
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They need to pay more competitive prices for CRP and or enroll more acres. In SD they have state sponsored CRP programs, that is an option too.
 
Plow, plow, plow...

I was just up in that area (NC IA) this past weekend; I was actually suprised at the amount of shelter belts and grass I seen up there-way more than down here-(let me quantify-those 2 counties though are known to have a high % of WPAs over most others in IA-plus seen a lot on private farmlands as well) but every field appeared to be already chisel plowed, so waste grain as a feed will not be an option this winter-though some have made the point on here that unplowed stubble is not much of a food source anyway, due to the efficiency of modern combining rigs.

With grain so high and land prices skyrocketing, this is a tough one...

I guess my "plan" is to head to SD or KS to get my fix. I will support any well thought efforts to help fix this, if it can be fixed.
 
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I'm telling ya, Pull Tabs are the way to go. Get after your legislators. Or Co officials. Worked great here for the snow mobile trails. It use to be all reimbursements from the state. With talk of cut backs quite a while ago, we here in our county put in pull tab boxes and fund most of it. I worked driving a groomer for 9 seasons during the winter months. They bought new equipment and foot most of the bill this way. Now were talking 80,000 $ pieces of equipment and 4 of them. 1 JD tractor and 3 diesel newer tucker snow cats. 20,000$ drags and so on. They do this just in a small # of bars. I believe 100% that if they looked into it they could buy lots of land over time and also get PF and so on to help with cost share on planting habitat. It could be state or county owned and would be there forever. How many people that you see at bars are playing those things. It might just be worth getting the bug in sportsman's clubs ears etc. There is also sportsman's clubs here that do it also. Not sure what they all do with the money, but it does go to local programs of some sort. I know a couple raise and release a bunch of birds at least. But on a somewhat larger scale it could be productive.
 
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To develop any kind of funds necessary to do some serious good, it's going to take a dedicated outside funding source, pull tabs are a good start. Many years ago in Missouri we passed the "Design for Conservation", a 1/8th cent sales tax to fund the Conservation Commission, independent of the legislature. Theory being they would be independent from pressure and make them a more professional organiation. It succeded in making them independent, and has budget that dwarves our neighbor states, but as far as spending that largesse, they chose to focus on deer and turkey. So instead of harvesting a staggering figure of 4 million quail, like we did in the 60's, we now are lucky to break 200,000! Morale, write you "uses allowed" to be target specific, and don't leave it to the nature of burecrats, who don't answer to anybody.
 
Only thing the state cares abouts them stupid pigs. Look what thats done for the state. Iowa wants poeple to smell pig s%@# not hunt pheasant. Make hog sites fund wildlife areas for ruining the states water and air.
 
oldandnew said:
To develop any kind of funds necessary to do some serious good, it's going to take a dedicated outside funding source, pull tabs are a good start. Many years ago in Missouri we passed the "Design for Conservation", a 1/8th cent sales tax to fund the Conservation Commission, independent of the legislature. Theory being they would be independent from pressure and make them a more professional organiation. It succeded in making them independent, and has budget that dwarves our neighbor states, but as far as spending that largesse, they chose to focus on deer and turkey. So instead of harvesting a staggering figure of 4 million quail, like we did in the 60's, we now are lucky to break 200,000! Morale, write you "uses allowed" to be target specific, and don't leave it to the nature of burecrats, who don't answer to anybody.
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November 2nd we passed Iowa's land and water legacy, it's more or less like Missouris program. There are a few other states that have the same type of program. I can't tell you off the top of my head how it breaks down, but it is a dramatic increase in funding. You should be able to learn more about it on the PF website. Supposedly we've lost a strip of CRP 6 miles wide running from Omaha to Chicago. The wet springs and harsh winters have done their damage on our population, because we still have enough acres to produce bag limits of 800-900,000 birds, per the /dnr anyway. I live in NW Iowa, hands down the premiere pheasant destination in Iowa, and it's been a rough year. I bought a new pup this summer and we did a lot of walking and didn't see any beards until early fall. There's birds but they've been pressured pretty hard, I can't believe the number of out of staters that came this year, espcially when word got out about the decline.
 
I like the idea of pull tabs. Is there a better way of ending a day of beating the brush for birds than to stop for a cold one topped off with a burger and fries? BS with the locals and other bird hunters. Throw out a pot of pull tabs with a big rooster on the side and I'm in! Here's a question. Is it better to buy a large track of land or smaller tracks in different areas for the overall good of the population?
 
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Even 40 acres a crack would help. And just keep em coming.:thumbsup: 40 here 40 there and pretty soon there is quite a few spots after 10 years. Bigger may be better. But anything is better then nothing. Loren L just told me that they were able to buy a 40 not too long ago in sth MN fund raising and the DNR cost shared with them. New public just like that.
 
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