Snow

mnmthunting

mnmthunting

Banned
MAN! have we been dumped on this year!:eek:
Another 8 inches yesterday, heavy stuff. Mild temps though.
All pheasants and turkeys now are needing help with food and are walking the roads. I have a lot of critters coming into the ranch yard.

Any area observations?
 
We had freezing rain most of the day yesterday then it turned to heavy snow. Probably got 5-6 inches. Sure doesn't look like spring is just around the corner in this area. :(
 
Well I am useualy positive, but this season we got the bad stuf here. Not good, twice over an inch of freezing rain and this snow. The birds will be down for sure round me this time. Killed a bunch in my pen even... Bummer, we had a good winter going till this last couple rounds.
 
We must have 3 feet of snow on the level. No snow melt at all here.
Found 2 dead turkeys by the hay bales nothing but skin and bones. Seems the snow is to soft for the turkeys to walk on and it takes to much energy to fly the 1/4 mile from the roosting area to the feeding area. Haven't seen any sign of pheasants for a while. It's below zero every night and so much wind.:eek:
 
The Good News is that warmer weather is on the way this week. Temps will finally get above freezing on Wednesday and are forecast to be in the mid 40's by the weekend. Then in the 40's and 50's for the first week in April.
 
We are at -2 again this morning.
Sunshine and 32 degrees today, tomorrow in the high 30's.:)
 
That last blizzard and freezing rain froze up the beeks on my pen birds. I was seeing about 30 along the roads by home every day, now 6. It did a number on them, but the ones that got through that storm will be fine, if cars don't get em. There is now grass on the shoulders so they are finding some things to eat. Dam rain, it just is not sposed to pour rain in the mid winter. Ice is 2" thick on the ground here. Below hard crust of at least 2' of snow. No hill tops showing in plowing yet. 1/2 hr south there is some dirt. We just got nailed here. Whata ya do :(.
 
do you think them them other 24 birds are coyote food??? that is a damn shame if so!!! i mean i have seen birds die off but it goes kinda slow like 30 then 25 then 15 then 6 what a bummer if you all are loosing that amount of birds???

can i ask fcspringer what part of the state are you in??? SW WC NW central???

that 6 from 30 really bums me out!!! now i dont know what to do come pheasant season in MN if the birds were hit like that in prime pheasant range we are in trouble!!!

this damn winter wont give up man!!!
 
-1 here today. This has got to be some sort of a record for March.
Forecast is for 39 today mid 40's by Fri.:cheers:

We didn't get a drop of rain here. We did get 28 inches of snow March 2 through March 20. On top of 2 feet!

Very tough on the deer and turkeys, haven't seen a pheasant in 3 weeks.
 
FCSpringer said:
There is now grass on the shoulders so they are finding some things to eat. Dam rain, it just is not sposed to pour rain in the mid winter. Ice is 2" thick on the ground here. Below hard crust of at least 2' of snow. No hill tops showing in plowing yet. 1/2 hr south there is some dirt. We just got nailed here. Whata ya do :(.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that ice is obviously not good for MN pheasants.:( Pheasants can live under the snow and stay insulated for some time, but obviously need to come up to feed at some point.

Pen birds that have survived in the wild up to this point are most likely dead at this point in the game.

Hopefully that ice is melting away by now.
 
FC, while a loss of your local birds to the ice storm is certainly plausible, I'm wondering if they have simply moved. I had been observing a flock of 50-60 all winter in a brushy patch along a black top road. Around the first week of March they weren't around anymore. Turns out they had moved one mile south to a thick patch of catails with some adjacent evergreen trees. There were a couple other good sized local flocks that also vacated their cover mid-winter, including 60 or so at our place. I think this movement may be caused by harassment from coyotes. Case in point, just last week my neighbor was watching the dawn break from his porch when pheasants in his cover patch suddenly started flying up and perching in the tops of his spruce trees. They seldom do that so he figured something was up. Sure enough, old wiley coyote soon slinked out of the patch. He reached for his trusty .243, but the yote made it over a ridge before he could get a shot off and escaped.
 
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