Mow it all down

A

Acemac

New member
just wanted to say that its really sad that it seems like more and more great ditches are being mowed down in SD. Great places that were lush thick cover are mowed right down to stubble. is there a good reason why this being allowed?
 
Dry conditions...fire risk. Depending on the location they let the locals hay it to keep fire dangers low. Have seen it a bit here in ND, and conditions around this area have been relatively similar in recent years...dry.
 
Is it possible that Farmers Don't want people Hunting the Ditches? I am just asking. Has anyone ever heard people doing this in SD. I assume if you are a farmer and Don't like people Hunting the ditches, this would help limit it.
 
Cross our fingers for more water that would help the birds more then anything so much great cover has become tillable in the last few years its alarming.
 
Mowing the ditches helps keep snow from building up and plugging the road. That's why I mow my ditches. I also have found if I don't mow my ditches it leads to garbage ending up in my ditches.
 
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Ford From your post history it seems like you are really making an impact in your own small part of the world and are really thoughtful of making good habitat for the birds. what do you think could be done simply on a larger (state wide) scale to improve the bird numbers.

That being said keep in mind I am a guy that hunts public land and has never had issues getting my 3 birds but I really want to get SD back to the days of old with birds everywhere!
 
There might be a few guys that mow their ditches to keep hunters out but its very few. Its 99% for snow. I have about a mile and a half of gravel to the main highway. Mowing the ditches in the fall can save me a ton of time during the winter from blowing and pushing snow.
 
3car said:
There might be a few guys that mow their ditches to keep hunters out but its very few. Its 99% for snow. I have about a mile and a half of gravel to the main highway. Mowing the ditches in the fall can save me a ton of time during the winter from blowing and pushing snow.
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agree, this is the main reason......but intense farming and no grass is the cause of many less birds.
 
My thought is the state needs to redo some public land and make so it's productive for wildlife. One thing I have done the past few years is I don't spray insecticide in my grass trees or food plots. Reason being is kill all the bugs there is nothing to eat all summer. That is just some thing I have done and I don't know if it is making a difference or if the habitat work is finally paying off, but I'm not going to change it because I have lots of birds now.
 
ford said:
My thought is the state needs to redo some public land and make so it's productive for wildlife. One thing I have done the past few years is I don't spray insecticide in my grass trees or food plots. Reason being is kill all the bugs there is nothing to eat all summer. That is just some thing I have done and I don't know if it is making a difference or if the habitat work is finally paying off, but I'm not going to change it because I have lots of birds now.
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What do you mean by "redo"?
 
They may be working on the public lands, it just takes time to develop. There are public lands called PLOTS in ND that many have heard of, but on some of the PLOTS lands there are efforts to make Cover PLOTS...and its stated on the signs. At those locations there are newly planted trees and shrubs. I've seen maybe 1 per 20 PLOTS in my area that are in the Cover PLOTS classification...you won't find it anywhere online that I know of because the Cover PLOTS are listed as PLOTS...with no detail to delineate which is which until you drive up to it.

Also, mowing for snow is probably number one as most have said...snow just blows across instead of drifting on the roads.
 
i Know in ND if i don't mow my ditches by Sept 15th the County does it for me, and they send me a bill. In ND i only have to mow one strip into the ditch, not the whole ditch.
 
By redo I mean, redo some of the plots of grass that has turned into a brome grass monoculture. I know it all takes time and money as I am finding out. But as we all know a monoculture is not prime for any wildlife. Not good for nesting or brood rearing and brome doesn't stand up in snow.

I do know they are making strides on some public ground and that's a great thing for us all! On my property I'm just implementing the "farm the best and save the rest" attitude and it's working for me. For others it might not, but I wasn't sure if it would work for me either so I talked to a lot of people including PF biologists, USFWS, NRCS among others and they really helped me get started. A very useful free tool

Improving the land (habitat and the stuff we farm )has really become a passion of mine.
 
It depends on what is important to you as a land owner. If you have cattle, then this provides feed. If you have habitat for wildlife, then it helps minimize road hunting. If you want to minimize time spent plowing your road to get from point A to point B during the winter, then mow your ditch.
 
Back in the old days , one only had to mow 10 feet of the shoulder to control snow accumulation. Not to the edge of the right of way.
 
Slightly off topic, but when I hunted with some South Dakota relatives I was surprised to hear the negitive and sometimes hostile remarks concerning "road hunters", or guys walking the ditches.

In Iowa it is an accepted way for the hunter to get a few minutes in coming home from school or work, or a less able hunter might walk on the shoulder with his dog in the ditch.

It did center around people hunting the ditches next to property owners who for whatever reason didn't allow hunting on their property. I would think if you run a fee based hunting farm, having someone getting the birds up out of the ditch would be a good thing.
 
McFarmer said:
Slightly off topic, but when I hunted with some South Dakota relatives I was surprised to hear the negitive and sometimes hostile remarks concerning "road hunters", or guys walking the ditches.

In Iowa it is an accepted way for the hunter to get a few minutes in coming home from school or work, or a less able hunter might walk on the shoulder with his dog in the ditch.

It did center around people hunting the ditches next to property owners who for whatever reason didn't allow hunting on their property. I would think if you run a fee based hunting farm, having someone getting the birds up out of the ditch would be a good thing.
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That doesn't surprise me. SW of Aberdeen are quite a few pheasant operations. Guys will hunt their ditches in an effort to shoot probably pen raised birds. It really annoys them! And there seams to be a fair amount of trespassing that goes along with it, shooting from the vehicle, ect... Its legal in SD to hunt small game within the ditches so to each their own.

I refuse to do it mostly because we have a bunch of habitat to hunt birds without pounding the ditches. I am sure if I lived in IA I would be hunting ditches too.
 
if you are going to hunt a ditch, pick one on a deserted road if possible or even one on a WIHA if possible.
 
ford said:
My thought is the state needs to redo some public land and make so it's productive for wildlife. One thing I have done the past few years is I don't spray insecticide in my grass trees or food plots. Reason being is kill all the bugs there is nothing to eat all summer. That is just some thing I have done and I don't know if it is making a difference or if the habitat work is finally paying off, but I'm not going to change it because I have lots of birds now.
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I think a lot of states DNR offices should head Ford's advice and look into the land they have and how they could improve it. I know we are always looking into adding more land as the answer but many properties that were once great have fallen off and if you look at pics of the land itself, the landscape has changed as well.
 
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