New Low

pheasantaddict

pheasantaddict

New member
If you live long enough, you will see many low points or high points in your life. If your an Iowa pheasant hunter you are seeing a very new low. What is the Iowa DNR thinking with this pheasant stocking rule? Have they succumb to misrepresented public thinking? Now is a time for progress and we are heading down a slippery slope if stocking pheasants is a solution. Habitat, Habitat,Habitat.
 
Habitat what is that? Here in Sioux County we farm from ditch to ditch cut are grass waterways and ditches even if we do not have livestock just so it looks pretty. Burn the terraces in the spring and tile everything.
 
Hey, Iowa kind of sounds like California as far as farming goes. I agree with habitat, habitat, habitat over stocking, stocking, stocking. My dog just picks up those pen raised birds, doesn't even let me shoot them.
 
moellermd said:
Habitat what is that? Here in Sioux County we farm from ditch to ditch cut are grass waterways and ditches even if we do not have livestock just so it looks pretty. Burn the terraces in the spring and tile everything.
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My favorite is when they weave their 24 row planter around telephone poles for an extra row of corn.
 
If I'm not mistaken (and I well might be) that was an Iowa legislative decision, not one by the DNR. DNR can live with it/wouldn't fight it was the response from them I heard.

I agree it was disappointing and a step backwards. Sometimes it pays to understand the various DNR's are very much political beasts and their public words may well not reflect the concerns or opinions of their professional biologists.

Feel for you folks in Iowa. I've taken it as a lesson I hope we all will not forget--putting most of your effort into narrow buffer programs--when combined with pressure from agricultural interests (and of course lousy weather luck) = a recipe for sending pheasant numbers in the toilet.

Larger acreage set asides just have to be part of the mix, and they need to be scattered around the landscape in sufficient #'s to support decent pheasant populations.
 
moellermd said:
Habitat what is that? Here in Sioux County we farm from ditch to ditch cut are grass waterways and ditches even if we do not have livestock just so it looks pretty. Burn the terraces in the spring and tile everything.[/QUOTE

Classic, that's how I remember it. Those mowed ditches sure look nice, not.
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pheasant addict, I think most hunters on this board would agree that stocking does not work, but what's the harm. The DNR just needs a few people to help feed all falcons, eagles, and hawks, that they have successfully reestablished.
 
I agree, Iowa is pheasant country. Some awful good hunting down there in the 70's.
Haven't been down there for a while, If the birds are gone, habitat is gone.
Stocking pen birds is better then doing nothing, but so temporary:(
Most will disappear very fast, I mean if wild pheasants can't make it. those pen birds have near O chance.
 
Iowa

This isn't meant as a poke just at Iowa, but I just did around trip junket up I-35 from K.C. To Minneapolis. I probably drove past enough decent upland habitat in two hundred miles across the state, north to south to keep you hunting for a couple a days. I read not to long ago that Iowa leads the nation in poor water quality, no wonder, thanks to the far sighted legislature, there is a hog farm on every corner of every quarter in some areas, I passed countless corn and bean fields, with 1+ acres of flooded crop in the middle of an otherwise dry field, obviously the result of wetland "reclamation", by some idiot, with the blessing of the USDA, and Iowa DNR, We are then forced to subsidize, farmers, to bribe them to enroll in WRP, CRP, etc. to get them to do the right thing. We already paiid them with price supports and direct improvement grants to plow it up in the first place. USDA farm policy is and has been since the depression, to keep commodity prices low, lots more voters eat, than farm. We all benefit from that, farmers, WICK beneficiaries, school lunch, you and me at the super market. But there is a price, we have mortgaged the future health of the land and the survival of the citizenry by our action. We may eventually do something we can't fix! See the Louisiana Gulf coast. Americans are and always have been fixated and motivated by weather and food, any threat that combines both is terrifying to us. Don't worry Iowa, you've always been progressive, My state Missouri has already destroyed our quail hunting from a harvest of 2 to 4 million in the 60's and 70's to maybe a quarter million today, Kansas City has to filter atrazine out of our drinking water, we areright behind you! Copy Nebraska, with the lukemia belt, from pesticides, Kansas, where our atrazine comes from in the spring, and Illinois who may even be ahead of Iowa when it comes to natural destruction. In fact you can pick a state, and if they haven't made a good run of mucking up the enviornment, it's because there was a natural or economic reason it was spared. Meanwhile when it comes to stocking pheasants in Iowa, Welcome to Iowa, the new Pennsylvania!!! It's at least somewhat comforting to note that the readers on this forum won't go willingly into the sunset of wild bird hunting, In Missouri we were so busy worshipping at the altar of deer and turkey, nobody made a peep till it was gone.
 
Very well said. Destruction of wetlands and more draintile than I care to imagine adds up to more flooding. If we don't turn the tide, you are correct in assuming we will be the new Pennsylvania. Me and the dogs will be looking for a new place to reside.
 
I wish I knew where that was! The agribusiness and petro-chemical giants beat us to South America, to exporting the same unsustainable, failed pattern of abuse we have here. The really stupid part of the equation, net farm income has dropped since the 50's, while net inputs and costs have increased 10 fold. We where all better off without the chemicals and leaving a little for mother nature. I think we better dig in here though, tell anyone who will listen, sometimes I think the tide can be turned. Even the misguided band-aid stocking law by the legislature proves it's on their mind, now if we can just educate them? get something meaningful done. Get Iowa St. to show farmers how to make the same amount with less inputs, clean water, wildlife habitat, less flooding, better soil quality. In stead of creating some cloned corn hybrid, requiring even more inputs, at even higher cost, using our tax dollars coupled with a miniscule grant from an agribusiness company, for which the agribusiness gets to patent the life form, and pays a small royalty to the land grant university in exchange! Besides, I am afraid that we on this forum are to old to move to some banana republic where we have to fight the revolution every 5 years, to establish a new government. Oh, I forgot, the agribusiness and petro-chemical people sponsor those as well!
 
There is still good pheasant hunting in northern Iowa for sure. I know many spots though in southern Iowa that you have to look long and hard. Might not see anything for a couple days, then flush 10 roosters at a time. Southern Iowa also has more falcons and hawks from what I've noticed and it has definitely taken it's toll. I did not realize until this year how many hawks and falcons there really are down here. I just started hunting southern Iowa this year so that may have a lot to do with it. One of the preserves me and a buddy train his dog at have a ton of hawks around there. We kicked up about 4 or 5 hawks all close to where the birds were planted. Luckily the dog got to the birds first.
 
it is much easier to save hunting habitat, than bring it back. stocking is a joke and a waste of money, if there was suitable habitat, stocking would not be necessary. it may be too late to save Iowa, too many ethanol plants, too much production farming. even SD has whole, solid sections (640 acres) of corn/beans....it is the saddest thing i have ever seen.
on top of this, the Iowa DNR raised NR upland licenses by a bunch last season, not for me, it doesn't work at all.
 
Food for thought. Was just reading this the other day in the Old Test. I thought to myself how mush habiat could be created from "dirty" fields if we followed the Lords' will on this subject.;)

Exodus 23:11

"but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what they leave. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove."

(New International Version)
 
I hate to see Iowa DNR putting money into stocking birds... As has already been mentioned, the money should be put towards habitat. It's best done right the first time, rather than playing with releasing pen-raised birds.

Predators can only be considered the culprit if there isn't sufficient habitat. Sure, they still kill their fair share, but it's very minor with the correct habitat. Birds need plenty of grassland space and dense thermal cover. Just realize I'm not sticking up for birds of prey or varmints.
 
Excellent post...you make some great points....most of us understand the problem...but the ones in control already have their minds made us and they dont let the facts get in the way.
 
I fear that in a decade (maybe less), Iowa's pheasant population will resemble ours here in MI. A few isolated pockets of respectable private land numbers, but that's about it. :(
 
1pheas4 said:
Food for thought. Was just reading this the other day in the Old Test. I thought to myself how mush habiat could be created from "dirty" fields if we followed the Lords' will on this subject.;)

Exodus 23:11

"but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what they leave. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove."

(New International Version)
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Amen. Fallow used to be in the crop rotation.:thumbsup:
 
Iowa(and SW Minnesota) are becoming annexed to the also-rans of the eastern states. The over-riding problem is that Iowa simply has to many of us. It has too many large cities and farms every half mile. It's not rampant "agri-burbia" like Michigan yet, but that is the next form it will take to finally rid Iowa of huntable #'s of pheasants just like we did in WI, MI, OH, IN, PA, IL, etc. during the late sixties and seventies. Iowa is just 35 years behind the "pheasant cancer curve". In less than 50 years, places like Huron, SD will fall to this "cancer" too until we run every last roostie otta here from Boston to LA. Habitat will mitigate the effects of too many of US for a while, but it becomes increasingly more difficult. All it takes is a few bad weather years and what habitat is left just can't overcome it. Habitat works best where very few people live. If SD or ND had as many people as Michigan, then they would have 1/20th the # of birds - that's just the macro-realities of people vs. pheasants. When the freeways were built in the eastern states, they unleashed a huge march of people from BIG urban areas into farm country, slicing, dicing, and hacking up large expanses of pheasant country into useless bits. There is a direct relationship between the building of freeways in high population(eastern) states to the massive decline in bird #'s during the mid-sixties. 5 and 10 acre-itis begat what I call agri-burbia - an ugly mutant crossbreed and a very unwise use of the land. There is not room for significant amounts of pheasant habitat anymore in Michigan or any other eastern state. Deer and turkey habitat, yes, but not for pheasants. PF should write-off the east and go create massive amounts of habitat where there are the fewest amounts of us. The next time you go looking for the real cause of the permanent decline in pheasant #'s in the east, go look in the mirror, multiply by 10,000.000, and spread that into every last nook and cranny of farm country.
 
As a Michigander, I couldn't have said it better myself. Nail on the head. The WT is highly adaptable to this. The phz, not so much.
 
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