Interesting topic. I'll go with my biology background, some research, and most of all nearly 40 years of pheasant hunting in corn and bean country coupled with some common sense. I've killed way too many birds packed with beans in late season, besides watching flocks of winter birds scouring the bean stubble to believe any of the 0 food value nonsense.. While studies prove beans have less useable nutrition due to protease inhibitors, pheasants obviously can live on them. Other factors which affect the ability of birds to metabolize nutrients, especially protein from soy beans include the age and decomposition state of the beans, and if they have begun to sprout, which is very common in wet falls in the mid-west. In fact i believe once beans start to form cotelydons, or sprout, most of the protease inhibitor is neutralized. SD has perhaps the most extensive research on this subject and their conclusion was that corn is best, and that birds eating mainly wild foods like weed seeds or those subsisting on mainly beans had lower body weights and less fat, but did not suggest any added mortality due to this. In fact no studies I know of have ever shown pheasants to starve to death in winter, no matter what the food source. Yet another study found that pheasants eating mainly beans developed larger and longer intestines to help with digestion, and maintained good health despite the lower nutritive value, as do birds living mainly on wild foods - amazing! Nature produces and maintains only the fittest! That said, corn is still the best for helping producing the over-abundance of birds that we all crave.
