Pheasant survey is out

I hunt a very large cattle ranch in the Redfield area. The cover is diverse and there is 2 1/4 sections that are owned by someone out of state right in the middle of this cattle operation. The ranchers maintain these two sections for the owner as pheasant habitat. I will come from Ohio to this area even if there were only a million birds statewide. Why, because I will still see more wild birds in one flush than I have seen in my lifetime in Ohio and I am 55 years old. I have labs also and don't come out till the week before Thanks giving then back the second week of December.
 
omsrud said:
You very obviously have the crystal ball so you tell us.

It is patently obvious that most of the participants on this board enjoy the sport for much more than you can obviously appreciate, and certainly don't appreciate your supposed clairvoyance as if you were the lone warning cry.

There were hay days in the past, some real low points , too, and there will be the "good old days" again. Those of us who chase waterfowl probably didn't think in the 80's that we would see the tremendous surge in waterfowl that the water and crp of the 90's brought. Those who saw pheasant numbers plummet in the 70's and early 80's and again in the 90's probably didn't think we'd see pheasants like the golden days of the 60's but this decade has been the good old days for many of us.

Heck, in the early 80's, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources had all but written off the the ringneck pheasants as a bird that would survive, and a few would be shot, but never again inhabit Minnesota in numbers enough to be considered a popularly pursued game bird. But some dogged bird hunters wouldn't accept that fate, organized a little grassroots conservation organization, got a state pheasant stamp passed, grew large enough to help lobby for CRP in the Farm Title, and now for the better part of the decade, Minnesota hunters have been harvesting about 1/2 million birds per season, and I would guess that about 499,995 thousand of those birds were harvested but a hunter who was enjoying himself immensely. Not millions of birds numbers like SD, but respectable numbers of birds that are just as enjoyable to hunt.

You are right. There is work to be done. SAFE was a start. General sign-up should be on the horizon. Producers, policy setters, and the general public will hopefully have learned the lesson of their shortsightedness of the last few years. But CRP has not gone the way of Soil Bank. There still are programs out there and demand still outpaces supply. Some will fatalistically throw in the towel and resign themselves to the country club. Those of us that care about more than headline setting numbers will pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and do our part to see to it that the last few years were not the sunset of the good old days but the sunrise, and the current "crisis" merely a rainy day. In the meantime, we'll enjoy every moment chasing the bird we love, whether we see one or we see a thousand.
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I think our discussion on this subject points out how things have changed since the pheasant was introduced. After the bird arrived habitat declined and continued to decline until the mid 70's when our pheasant population hit an all time low. Experts blamed the decline on predators until the Biologists convinced us that habitat was to blame. Then in the early 80's organizations such as Pheasants Forever, Pheasant Country and many others started to work on improving habitat. The Conservation Reserve program came out of this effort, also fee hunting, Preserves and land purchases for hunting. Habitat today does not come without expense of time and money. If we are willing to give that then we will have pheasants in the future.
 
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I personally know, or know of, alot of guys who own land for pheasant hunting. One foursome that I know own over 3000 acres, and they take advantage of every program available to create habitat. All told, I probably know of at least a dozen different guys/groups who own land for hunting purposes who aren't farmers or even residents of SD. 5 of them are within 2 miles from where my land is...all of that habitat matters...alot! And I don't think my situation is all that unique...over the past 10 years there were lots of guys who wanted to diversify their investments who sought out land in places like SD. One small part of the total equation... I can say with some certainty that this phenomenon didn't exist in the '70's after soil bank went away, and it does create birds.
 
benelli-banger said:
I personally know, or know of, alot of guys who own land for pheasant hunting. One foursome that I know own over 3000 acres, and they take advantage of every program available to create habitat. All told, I probably know of at least a dozen different guys/groups who own land for hunting purposes who aren't farmers or even residents of SD. 5 of them are within 2 miles from where my land is...all of that habitat matters...alot! And I don't think my situation is all that unique...over the past 10 years there were lots of guys who wanted to diversify their investments who sought out land in places like SD. One small part of the total equation... I can say with some certainty that this phenomenon didn't exist in the '70's after soil bank went away, and it does create birds.
Click to expand...

You are very right. The phenomenon did not exist prior to the 70's because habitat was abundant, pheasant populations were high and plenty of places to hunt - all for free. After the 70's improvements in habitat came from money and sweat. Fortunately there are enough hunters who are willing to invest in habitat, in a variety of ways, to the extent that we have abundant pheasants today. As long as enough hunters stay in the game and are willing to spend their dollars and time, we will continue to enjoy good hunting.
 
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SD pheasants up 13%

For those in the optimists club or statisticians or analysts club, I just came across an interesting stat on the 2009 survey that has not been mentioned here in this thread but I think should be in order to help bring things into context.

The 2009 survey shows birds are down 26% over last year but are up 13% over the 10 year average.

:thumbsup:
 
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