SD Brood Count Survey Guesswork. Hmm?

i assume like pheasant & turkeys prairie grouse can mate & have many broods from just that 1 mateing so they can kinda wait to nest till either better weather & or have another brood if something happens to the 1st i think you can & will see baby prairie grouse & baby pheasant at they same times???

prairie grouse do start there mating dance early like in jan-feb if its sunny & the snow is not in there dancing grounds

man i hope that report was only for the lower brule rez as if thats state wide we are in trouble i think the rest of the state did well compared to that area of SD

i was not far from the lower brule this spring & the numbers were kinda like what the say i guess??? i was not impressed with the pheasant numbers at all seen more grouse...
 
Chris, you probably have a better idea then most! What do you think? Were numbers off last year's count and numbers right this year or are they just missing so many late hatch Broods?
 
BleuBijou said:
Chris, you probably have a better idea then most! What do you think? Were numbers off last year's count and numbers right this year or are they just missing so many late hatch Broods?
Click to expand...

The West River routes do not reflect at all what is happening West River.

One of my owners says they have a lot of birds and you would be hard pressed to drive by their farm and see anything in the ditches.

Same thing at my place. The road counts I see do not equate to field counts.

The whole GFP report could be obsolete if there is a new trend where birds are not coming to the roads like the have. Sound ridiculous? Maybe. Maybe not.

Other owners report seeing lots of birds in June and not many at all now. Plenty of hoppers though.

The only static thing in the report is the physical route that is driven. Every other thing in it has variables.
 
UGUIDE said:
No it isn't. Jim River open CRP enrollment is approaching 100,000 acre goal.

To say the habitat is gone is like saying 2013 will be the best pheasant year South Dakota has ever seen.

Get real. Get factual.
Click to expand...

That is great about the Jim River CREP BUT we are still talking about a NET LOSS of 500,000 CRP acres in the last 6 years. On top of that untold thousands of marginal acres put back into production, sloughs burned, windbreaks dozed..etc...

Chris, I think you might still be ok WEST River and that is where I would focus my efforts going forward. I will stand by my statements regarding East River Habitat especially..that it has been damaged beyond repair.
 
safari said:
That is great about the Jim River CREP BUT we are still talking about a NET LOSS of 500,000 CRP acres in the last 6 years. On top of that untold thousands of marginal acres put back into production, sloughs burned, windbreaks dozed..etc...

Chris, I think you might still be ok WEST River and that is where I would focus my efforts going forward. I will stand by my statements regarding East River Habitat especially..that it has been damaged beyond repair.
Click to expand...

We will see as I have "sold out" for natural pheasant production on my farm in south central SD. I have harvest goals for our hunters of 500-1000 roosters annually on 700 acres. Is 1 rooster per acre unthinkable??? The grand experiment of truly sustainable Ag production in harmony with wildlife production.

The system needed reform and you cannot go forward without first going backwards in most cases.

It is high time CRP and supporting programs reinvent themselves just like any other Gov. program needing reform (not to mention the farm bill).

SD just got 9 million in WHIP funding and I submitted my plan for 4 whip programs: cover crop, conservation crop rotation, conservation tillage and pond creation. We'll see what comes of it. This Whip funding is critical in mitigating the risk to do these practices.
 
as dependent as this state is on hunting revenue, you would have thought some coalition would have been formed to at least make recommendations to mitigate this kind of impact...guess not. :(
the loss of habitat is the primary driver or soon well be...
 
Loss of habitat is certainly a concern East River, but I can assure there's still lots of great habitat on public as well as private. I live by the Jim River, and many of the sloughs that got mowed and burned last year, got flooded back this spring. A two mile long cattail slough right by my house that was mowed last year now has cattails and reeds about 8 feet tall now. Lots of marginal land was worked and planted during the drought last year, but nothing but weeds now. I hunt a lot of public areas that are next to great private land and pay hunt operations. Chris said it right, lot of states would love to have a million acres of CRP. Let's work to enhance and better our programs, but we need to remember to be thankful for what we have. Every day hunting is a good day.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top