Leavenworth county pheasant hotspot
- Thread starter carptom1
- Start date
Two issues, capacity of the average farmer. Most have the ability to farm a tremendous amount of land as compared to before or just after the mechanical revolution. A hundred and sixty acre farm successfully raised families of 6 kids! Because of inflation, can't be done. I'm not sure 1000 acres would be able to support a family of that size. In the old days, farmers were hedgers, raised oats, corn, wheat. Now with USDA subsidized insurance, they hedge their corn or soybean crop! Buy using heavy pesticides, herbicides, less physical and numbers to do planting, harvesting, tilling, we have idle time, to bulldoze the hedgerow or clear out the fence line to raise more beans and corn, and higher yields to boot. Quail are native, but responded to management of the last decade, earlier they were less prominent, now because of current uses again not as prominent. After all the share-cropper, carpetbagger south with small fields that were co-op from large estates is where quail became king! On public property, we have to respond to the public citizen, some want no activity, some want heavier management. It becomes a cat fight to please everybody. I remember that a certain wildlife area in Nebraska, with a grant from Pheasants forever, bull-dozed a line of mature cottonwood trees in the middle of a county with almost no hedgerows or woody cover! I shot many limits of pheasants under the branches of those trees, enjoyed the shade the sound, the spot! I admit maybe it might be better for pheasants, down the road. I don't know why? But the experts say so. meanwhile I meandered around black hulks of smoldering tree trunks, saw and shot a rooster, where there used to be hundreds. Why on public property, don't we issue permits for firewood gathering, grazing rights, with preference for goats! and collect a lease fee on public property, and in some cases graze it down, in spots. Till it where it can be , forget pesticides, herbicides, believe me there will be crops, let the lease fees reflect the difference, then let it go fallow every other year, grow up in ragweed and shatter cane. If you want grow prairie grass so be it, but it would not be my choice, graze, slash and burn, then rest would be my choice. I believe the wildlife department could over see that, and a small fee income. In southeast Ks. it was french farmers, mostly liberal, had their own ideas of farming. My family said, "in America they all eat to go to work, for the French, we work in to eat!" those were my relatives. so they raised Kaiffer corn ( milo), and small grains, that was before the fescue invasion, and with new strip pits all over, which were being converted to reclaimed land, and re-vegetated itself, as a base, lots of quail. strip pits grew up, land and costs become expensive, farmers get old, quail diminished.
Prairie Drifter
Well-known member
Duckn, the eastern wildlife areas are harder than those further west as many of them have housing development butting up against them. They are also often closer to highways, airports, and other down-range hazards that can make prescribed fire more dangerous and difficult. We also have to be aware that our constituents are often on the area enjoying their pursuits while we are trying to burn. The spring burning season is toughest as the fire conditions and weather conditions are more volatile. I think that Perry has seen several managers over the past decade and you have to understand that there are competing demands on the manager's time and any new hire will take a couple of years to get familiar with the area and what needs to be done. Yes, having an adequate crew and equipment is another obstacle to overcome. Good place for folks on this board and other interest groups to provide assistance! We are all under the same demands for help at the same time and the fisheries folks are usually spawning walleye then too. I'm using patch burn/patch grazing on my area that rolls half of the burns in those units to July/August. That gives me more time and calmer weather conditions to do half the burns. Those summer burns can be done with a smaller crew and lower volatility level. They also are more effective in setting back woody growth.
Prairie Drifter
Well-known member
Oldandnew, some very good points! The problem with dealing with individuals on firewood permits is the time it takes. When you deal with someone that wants a certain kind of wood at a pickup load at a time, you waste valuable time that could be more productive. When you do the math and start with 260 work days for a manager and start subtracting: annual leave, holidays, meetings, training, law enforcement, hunter's education, cleaning toilets, blading roads, fixing fence......... Pretty soon the numbers are pretty restricted on what we have left for actually managing the habitat. I am a bitcher at work when competing interests for my time in critical habitat management months supercede that habitat work!!! Add in periods like the recent drought and the 2013 burn season that only offered about 3 legal burn days, and you find your 4 year burn rotation is now 8. Further, reservoir properties are either Bureau of Reclamation or Corps of Engineers and they have restrictions on what techniques we can use. Even the USFWS has restrictions on what we can do where we draw income. Leopold was quoted as using the axe, plow, match and cow as management techniques and that remains the same. However, the axe and plow may be a dozer, the match a drip torch........
Yes, the evolution of farming from farms that produced beef, pork, poultry, and 8-12 crops so that, as you noted, they were hedged against individual failures. Those small fields, diversity, and interspersion are what led to the boom in bobwhite populations. With the current "specialist" farmers where often only 1 crop is grown on hundreds of acres in individual fields, the boom may be a bust! It will take change on a landscape scale to get back to where we have been, and I don't think we will ever return. We will have to rely on innovative approaches similar to CRP and some of the other soil protection methods to give us some stability in our game populations. Deer and turkey have fared better via the successional shift toward woodlands. Unfortunately, the clock is ticking on that as well. All too soon it will canopy over and useable cover at the game animal level will be gone as well.
Yes, the evolution of farming from farms that produced beef, pork, poultry, and 8-12 crops so that, as you noted, they were hedged against individual failures. Those small fields, diversity, and interspersion are what led to the boom in bobwhite populations. With the current "specialist" farmers where often only 1 crop is grown on hundreds of acres in individual fields, the boom may be a bust! It will take change on a landscape scale to get back to where we have been, and I don't think we will ever return. We will have to rely on innovative approaches similar to CRP and some of the other soil protection methods to give us some stability in our game populations. Deer and turkey have fared better via the successional shift toward woodlands. Unfortunately, the clock is ticking on that as well. All too soon it will canopy over and useable cover at the game animal level will be gone as well.
Only the ducks and geese survive!..... till we till up the remaining grasslands up north.
I would volunteer time to help burn or do whatever. I have asked to volunteer but due to liability i would need to use my own equipment I was told. I'd love to have some birds back in numbers. There is one particular wildlife area that I use in which the manager has done an outstanding job!
I'm going to a QF banquet next month. I'd love to see some volunteers step up for our local wildlife area.
When I get a chance I'm going to IM you for some ideas.
I'm going to a QF banquet next month. I'd love to see some volunteers step up for our local wildlife area.
When I get a chance I'm going to IM you for some ideas.
Prairie Drifter
Well-known member
More than happy to contribute. Many options for assistance. Some limitations of course, however, the new prescribed fire policy we just wrote leaves open the option to use volunteers. Some preliminary training by watching some videos may be required as well as designated clothing requirements.
KSBrittman
Active member
Prarie Drifter said :
Go back to some of your childhood haunts and see what has happened to the habitat. That grass/shrub drainage you hunted quail and pheasants in is probably now a mix of mature elms and cool-season grass. We brought it to this point and we're the only ones that can turn back the clock!!!
__________________
I could have set it better , I go back to the areas I hunted as a kid in the 80 and 90's in NE Ks and the waterways are mowed to the crop edge, if they do have cover it is smooth broam and very little weeds. When we find birds they are normally close to warm season pastures or hay fields , CRP . One farm I used to hunt always had a wheat patch in it , the wheat patch would often rotate in different areas of this 160 . I can remember when the stubble got sprayed late one year getting into 6 coveys and shooting a number of pheasants . We are lacking Brood rearing habitat in the east .
Drifter would a habitat stamp for upland/ pheasant help out ? I know when I hunted MT there was an upland habitat stamp and I believe the Dakota's have a stamp also ,
Go back to some of your childhood haunts and see what has happened to the habitat. That grass/shrub drainage you hunted quail and pheasants in is probably now a mix of mature elms and cool-season grass. We brought it to this point and we're the only ones that can turn back the clock!!!
__________________
I could have set it better , I go back to the areas I hunted as a kid in the 80 and 90's in NE Ks and the waterways are mowed to the crop edge, if they do have cover it is smooth broam and very little weeds. When we find birds they are normally close to warm season pastures or hay fields , CRP . One farm I used to hunt always had a wheat patch in it , the wheat patch would often rotate in different areas of this 160 . I can remember when the stubble got sprayed late one year getting into 6 coveys and shooting a number of pheasants . We are lacking Brood rearing habitat in the east .
Drifter would a habitat stamp for upland/ pheasant help out ? I know when I hunted MT there was an upland habitat stamp and I believe the Dakota's have a stamp also ,
Prairie Drifter
Well-known member
Federal Aide is a significant benefit to us as sportsmen, but there are limitations. At some point, new sources of income by states are viewed by USFWS as "Program Income" and every dollar you bring in you have to lose somewhere else. I don't know enough to totally answer your question, but I'm guessing that this would probably fit into this category.
As an aside, we've had problems with price increases on our licenses. For some reason with each price increase we lose somewhere in the 13-17% of our license buyers. There comes a point where that becomes a negative. I, personally, am astonished by this because $20 for 365 days of sport is the best bargain out there!!! What else can you get for 5.5 cents per day? One thing I think we ought to do is make our wildlife areas and state fishing lakes "REQUIRE" users to have one of the 3 primary licenses to use. I think that 20-40% of our users on public land possess no license at all. Capturing those users would increase our funding and if we got them to buy the primary licenses, the money brought in would be matched with PR and DJ federal funds 3:1!
As an aside, we've had problems with price increases on our licenses. For some reason with each price increase we lose somewhere in the 13-17% of our license buyers. There comes a point where that becomes a negative. I, personally, am astonished by this because $20 for 365 days of sport is the best bargain out there!!! What else can you get for 5.5 cents per day? One thing I think we ought to do is make our wildlife areas and state fishing lakes "REQUIRE" users to have one of the 3 primary licenses to use. I think that 20-40% of our users on public land possess no license at all. Capturing those users would increase our funding and if we got them to buy the primary licenses, the money brought in would be matched with PR and DJ federal funds 3:1!
Pheasants in Leavenworth
I lived in Leavenworth/ Lansing area from 2007 to 2012 I never saw a wild Pheasant during this time. The closest I have seen a Pheasant is 20 miles West of Atchison. Locals told me there were once birds in the area but it has been over 20 years since anyone has seen a wild Pheasant that I know of in that area.
Tom
I lived in Leavenworth/ Lansing area from 2007 to 2012 I never saw a wild Pheasant during this time. The closest I have seen a Pheasant is 20 miles West of Atchison. Locals told me there were once birds in the area but it has been over 20 years since anyone has seen a wild Pheasant that I know of in that area.
Tom
1nceaneagle
Member
LV County Pheasants
Grew up on a small farm west of Leavenworth in the 60s and 70s and we hunted virtually every weekend during bird season, a lot of times after school. Numerous coveys of quail and we'd often get into birds within 300 yards or so of the house. We'd see a pheasant every now and then but wasn't often, word back then was that there was a missing mineral or something in the ground that made nesting really tough. Don't know if that is true or not.
In the 80s and early 90s my brother and I killed a lot of pheasants in Brown County, many days we shot our limit of pheasants as well as quail. We didn't realize back then how good we had it, drive 50 miles and shoot our limit. I live in Virginia now and was back over Xmas and my brother took me hunting up in Atchison and Brown counties. He drove by some of the prime hunting spots we used to hunt in the early 90s and I simply didn't recognize it. What were formerly weedy draws and waterways that always held birds were simply gone, farmer is now just planting right over where they used to be. I think the drought allowed farmers to get in to what was formerly marginal land, clean it out and gain a few extra acres of land. With no till planting they are not so concerned with how much the land is going to erode so they rip out the waterways.
There are no poor farmers anymore, as someone pointed out earlier, there just isn't 160 acres farms much anymore, it's farming on an industrial scale and with no til, Roundup ready beans/corns, there's just no habitat.
Grew up on a small farm west of Leavenworth in the 60s and 70s and we hunted virtually every weekend during bird season, a lot of times after school. Numerous coveys of quail and we'd often get into birds within 300 yards or so of the house. We'd see a pheasant every now and then but wasn't often, word back then was that there was a missing mineral or something in the ground that made nesting really tough. Don't know if that is true or not.
In the 80s and early 90s my brother and I killed a lot of pheasants in Brown County, many days we shot our limit of pheasants as well as quail. We didn't realize back then how good we had it, drive 50 miles and shoot our limit. I live in Virginia now and was back over Xmas and my brother took me hunting up in Atchison and Brown counties. He drove by some of the prime hunting spots we used to hunt in the early 90s and I simply didn't recognize it. What were formerly weedy draws and waterways that always held birds were simply gone, farmer is now just planting right over where they used to be. I think the drought allowed farmers to get in to what was formerly marginal land, clean it out and gain a few extra acres of land. With no till planting they are not so concerned with how much the land is going to erode so they rip out the waterways.
There are no poor farmers anymore, as someone pointed out earlier, there just isn't 160 acres farms much anymore, it's farming on an industrial scale and with no til, Roundup ready beans/corns, there's just no habitat.
KSBrittman
Active member
I grew up in Brown county and that's where I did most of my hunting , in the 80's and 90's
The farming practices have changed and very little CRP , there is very few good areas left .
We work with a farmer in and adjacent county on habitat projects and we are seeing the benefits of our work .
The farming practices have changed and very little CRP , there is very few good areas left .
We work with a farmer in and adjacent county on habitat projects and we are seeing the benefits of our work .