Reducing The Limit for Pheasants

westksbowhunter said:
We don't have that problem here at all. Deer numbers are drastically down and turkey numbers are not much better. We never saw one Jake the entire turkey season if that tells you anything about the turkey hatch. And it won't be any better next year.
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I am pretty sure that we live in the same part of the State. I am in Crawford county, and if I am wrong, I'm sorry. I would strongly disagree with your take on the deer population, and we saw lots of Jakes last season.
I have the opportunity of driving some back roads to and from work, which I do frequently, as of today, I have not saw a turkey hatch.So you might be right about this years hatch.
Now,on the other hand the deer population is quite strong, and by the looks of all of the twins, will be strong this winter.
:cheers:
 
matto said:
The KDWPT upland game guy had 45 minutes on the agenda at this spring's Kansas Habitat Convention in Wichita. Generally speaking, he used it to defend the Dpeartment's position that lower limits and/or shorter seasons won't help, especially for pheasants. He did concede that under some conditions over-harvesting quail was a possibility.

Although it wasn't his main point, he did convince me to try to selectively harvest males when quail hunting. I guess they are not as a monogamous as I believed.
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IDing a quail as male on flush would be quite an accomplishment. I only read of it being done in a novel, Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full. Not sure I could ever do it.
 
BritChaser said:
IDing a quail as male on flush would be quite an accomplishment. I only read of it being done in a novel, Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full. Not sure I could ever do it.
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It is not hard to spot a male vs female Bob. The males white face is easy to spot.
 
Quail are doing just fine, as long as they have some habitat.

Most people do not hunt much after Christmas, but I do until the last day of the season.
 
SetterNut said:
Quail are doing just fine, as long as they have some habitat.

Most people do not hunt much after Christmas, but I do until the last day of the season.
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well, good thing many are not like you setternut! :D just joking with ya, i bet you are real selective on what you leave for seed too...:thumbsup:
 
males

I believe that the net effect of shooting males would amount to not very much. If a guy hunted them a fair amount and had many birds in the area, it would be possible to pick and choose, but, most don't have that luxury in that they see few quail on a hunt, have not they bagged hundreds of them, so, the challenge is to just shoot one of the things and hope, they way quail usually flush, the white on the male's head is pretty easy to pick out

cheers
 
SetterNut said:
It is not hard to spot a male vs female Bob. The males white face is easy to spot.
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Agreed! You could do it, BritChaser, easily. My vision is average at best, even with glasses, and I'm at least 90% accurate at determining male/female on the flush. I have a friend with good eyes, and he's never taken a female bobwhite when we hunted together.

I've always heard it didn't make a difference on quail if you shoot the males or females, but if there is evidence to support passing on the females, I would do it.
:cheers:
 
I have seen many cases with radio collared quail where the hen was killed, the male set and brooded the clutch, raised them to maturity. This will also happen under stress in the population the hen will abandon the nest, find another male, and reproduce a second time, leaving the divorced dad to pick up the pieces and raise the brood. I think harvest of quail may make difference in stressed high traffic hunting. As far as "shooting roosters" only...it's a bunch of poppycock! Another diversion which takes us a little farther away from the goal....Habitat! Only habitat. I am sure it's a statement by some well wisher that is grasping at straws to make a difference. Truth is in a lifetime, following quail, (50 years in the field), the only people who triumphed the declaration that " I only shoot roosters" is a guy with a blonde at the bar, or coffee table conversation, or a guy who stumbled into a limit of roosters by dumb luck, it's based on boasting about shooting, about marksmanship, the eagle eye, and manners, not about saving the species. As far as pheasants, in high traffic areas, like public ground, reducing the pheasant limit might distribute that harvest to more individuals, have little effect on the population. pheasant males after breeding season are excess surplus, we need very few to ensure the species. It will be nearly impossible to regulate, effectively without a statewide limit reduction, penalizing the hunters where a higher bag limit justified. Different birds different management, currently we seem to manage all upland birds as a lump sum group. Quail and Prairie Chicken/Grouse get the short end.
 
Great post O&N! It goes back to math! Pheasants are truely polygamous. There only needs to be 1 male for up to, and probably even more than, 15 females in order to ensure that each female gets a chance to be bred and produce their 1 clutch of successfully hatched eggs. Quail are not truely polygamous. Research has shown that some % in the teens of hens leave a male to incubate the first clutch to go on and lay a second. Also, somewhere in the lower single digits of % will leave the second male with the clutch he sired to go on to generate a third clutch. This third clutch has a lot of hardship to overcome in most latitudes and may not result in live chicks in many years. The ratio is a maximum of 1:3 from this scenario and that is only necessary in single digit % of the time. Thus, shooting only males could, in all likelyhood, result in a lower production rate because it could conceivably result in a shortage of males to incubate nests and/or breed females. The closer a species is to monomagous, the more important it is to keep the sex ratio close to 1:1. The fact that quail fall somewhere between 1:1 and 1:3 doesn't leave much logic in shooting only males!
 
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I don't discriminate on quail. If it is pointed, the best shot is taken.

These pics were from Ace's first season on hunting, 2009 was a good year for quail. Not had a year like it since around this area.

Nov09_28.jpg


Nov09_38-1.jpg


Cokely10-2-09_118.jpg
 
A basic upland bird principle:

You can not "stockpile" birds from one season to the next. The reason for limits is simply to spread the current years' hunting opportunities over a longer season, NOT to enhance long-term gains in numbers.

Michigan has a FEW pheasants. BARELY worth hunting, but they do exist. If the season in Michigan were completely closed for 10 years, Michigan would have NO more birds in year 10 than in year 1.

Habitat(more specifically GRASS!!!!!), is the factory that produces birds. Michigan's landscape theme contains about 1/10 of 1% grass. South Dakota's theme has about 12-14% grass. No surprise that SD has about 100 times more birds than MI.

Forget about pesticides, predators, limits, blah, blah, blah. SD has much more of these "bad things" than MI. SD overwhelms these insignificant issues with HABITAT.

If the OVERWHELMING landscape theme contains 8-15% grass(or a suitable tall "grassy" substitute like wheat), there will be decent to exciting numbers of birds. When grass falls much below 5%, bowling and golf start to look like more attractive pursuits to most(but not all) pheasant hunters.
 
@ O&N

I'm not saying I only shoot male bobwhites. I'm just saying I can tell before I pull the trigger if it is a male or female, and that I WOULD selectively take males only if there was evidence it would make a difference. I'm sure we all would.

I know that changing/evolving habitat is the main cause of the bobwhite's steady decline in SEK according to the biologists. The weather the last few years has really hurt them in some of my regular SEK haunts as well.

Nobody controls the weather, and I can't force landowners to make upland habitat a top priority on their land. I can only control what I do and the choices I make. If evidence existed that changing the limits, season dates, or shooting males only would help quail, I would want to know.

It's not a holier-than-thou, blonde at the bar, macho bragging, or anything else. It is about a desire to do right by our quarry as a conservationist hunter, to be sure we are not taking more than the resource can replenish. Asking these questions is a good thing. We discuss these issues because we care.
:cheers:
 
Prairie Drifter said:
Great post O&N! It goes back to math! Pheasants are truely polygamous. There only needs to be 1 male for up to, and probably even more than, 15 females in order to ensure that each female gets a chance to be bred and produce their 1 clutch of successfully hatched eggs. Quail are not truely polygamous. Research has shown that some % in the teens of hens leave a male to incubate the first clutch to go on and lay a second. Also, somewhere in the lower single digits of % will leave the second male with the clutch he sired to go on to generate a third clutch. This third clutch has a lot of hardship to overcome in most latitudes and may not result in live chicks in many years. The ratio is a maximum of 1:3 from this scenario and that is only necessary in single digit % of the time. Thus, shooting only males could, in all likelyhood, result in a lower production rate because it could conceivably result in a shortage of males to incubate nests and/or breed females. The closer a species is to monomagous, the more important it is to keep the sex ratio close to 1:1. The fact that quail fall somewhere between 1:1 and 1:3 doesn't leave much logic in shooting only males!
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Thanks. I will share this info with my friend I mentioned in a previous post as well. I always appreciate the science you bring to this forum.:thumbsup:
 
RK, I expect you already know this, but I want to make sure it is said that the definition of habitat is rarely just centered or focused on "grass". Let me know if I lose you here, but a "grassland" is made up of far more than just grass! Prairie ecosystems often are composed of several hundred species of plants and it is the product of the "whole" that makes the "grassland" productive for our upland game species. Yes, there are species that are more important within the long list of species, but often it is the diversity provided by a "grassland" in the right successional stage that promotes the overall health of the game bird species that we are focused upon.

Across their range in the United States, bobwhite thrive in woodlands, grasslands, shrublands, and even some cropland dominated landscapes. Yes, a common factor in these habitat types is a "grass" component. The best woodlands are savannah-like with a grassland understory. The shrublands are a mixture of grass and woody shrubs. The grasslands have a necessary woody and forb component, and the cropland areas are not all cropland, but a mixture of grasslands, woodlands, cropland, and shrubland. The annual weed components in all of these have great influence too.

Some of what you are seeing where grassland states produce more birds is the fact that the non-grassland states have less habitat, smaller populations, and are subject to greater fluctuations due to the susceptibility of populations under those conditions. Most upland birds are dependent upon lower successional stages in plant communities. Mature forest ecosystems are not great bird producers. Shifting succession within grassland habitats doesn't take as much change/effort and, thus, can increase a population significantly if done across the habitat available on a landscape scale. Success is proportional to effort. Sometimes, the Good Lord takes care of this by providing a drought or other condition that forces habitat into an improved condition for game. Sometimes it works against that end. However, the bigger the positive impact, the bigger the benefit.
 
Toad, to be a true conservationist, we sometimes have to do the homework to understand the facts and fallacies out there as they relate to our valuable game species. There is as much of one as there is another and we can see that some folks on this board have fallen prey to fallacies. We're human! We believe what we understand. My predecessors took this area different directions than I am now because it was in a different stage then and the science was at times wrong in the past when we didn't have the benefits of telemetry and such. The knowledge base is always growing and, if you keep up with the mountain of information, you will have a higher understanding and make better decisions in management. As discussed elsewhere on the board, if you mix in bad politics, all of that knowledge can be thrown out with the bath water and bad choices will be made to placate voters. And, no, I won't go into detail explaining that! :)
 
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PrairieDrifter,

Yes, I started out making a general point about "stockpiling" upland game. Then went on to discuss habitat that relates more specifically to pheasants. And, of course, there are important sub-components of habitat for pheasants such as shelter belts and farm crops. BUT, for pheasants, the overwhelming habitat ingredient is TALL, CRP-type grass or that which grew in fallow cropland in the soil bank days.

Sharptail Grouse, Prairie Chickens and Huns have some overlap with pheasants but as you move(in this order) to quail, chukar, and finally to forest grouse, their habitat needs become farther removed from any need for grass to the point of zero need.
 
From Pheasant Forever website

Are there any comparisons between different systems of harvest regulations which support the assertion that liberal seasons don't reduce pheasant populations?
Research completed in Minnesota and Iowa shows that imposing hunting season restrictions has no measurable effect on future recruitment of pheasants. Biologists compared 27-year population trends (1964-1990) in two adjacent areas of similar habitat and weather conditions (upper two tiers of Iowa counties and the lower two in Minnesota). Hunting regulations were not similar. Minnesota daily bag limits were one bird less on average, and season length only about half that of Iowa's. During four consecutive years, Minnesota restricted and even closed its seasons when severe winter weather reduced populations. Iowa, by contrast, maintained its liberal seasons (50+days), although the same magnitude of pheasant declines were evident. (See graph.)

In spite of the differences, Iowa and Minnesota had remarkably similar population trends over the 27-year period. The conservative management approach in Minnesota resulted in season restrictions that had little or no benefit to the population. From 1967-70 Minnesota severely curtailed or closed the pheasant season because of a string of bad winters. During those four years only 50% of normal harvest was achieved, leading to the loss of 2.4 million hunter hours and 400,000 roosters, which could have been harvested without a negative effect on future populations.
 
RK Special K said:
PrairieDrifter,

Yes, I started out making a general point about "stockpiling" upland game. Then went on to discuss habitat that relates more specifically to pheasants. And, of course, there are important sub-components of habitat for pheasants such as shelter belts and farm crops. BUT, for pheasants, the overwhelming habitat ingredient is TALL, CRP-type grass or that which grew in fallow cropland in the soil bank days.

Sharptail Grouse, Prairie Chickens and Huns have some overlap with pheasants but as you move(in this order) to quail, chukar, and finally to forest grouse, their habitat needs become farther removed from any need for grass to the point of zero need.
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let's see where this goes but I think you are dead wrong on you last paragraph. I think all grouse use grass or like vegetation a great deal, for sure blue grouse, ruff grouse and sharptails, likely the other's also

cheers
 
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