What changes have you seen?

M

Montana Husker

Banned
Well, turning 50, half a century old. Thinking about the changes in Bird hunting that I have seen and experienced. Grew up hunting Nebraska since I was old enough to walk thru stalks, draws, and fence lines. I remember starting carrying a gun in the late 70's, there were birds, pheasant, quail and grouse, but nothing like it would be with the start of CRP. If you ever hunted in Nebraska, you will know the name Lyell Bremser, he called Husker football games on Saturdays. How many birds I cleaned while listening to him, I will never know, but I do know every cafe or gas station in Nebraska was tuned into him on Saturdays, listening. But Lyell called it quits, just after that, CRP came to be. I was able to experience pheasant hunting on friends and family farms that I will never forget. I remember as a young man, telling my boss, I didn't know when, but the first snow fall, I would be out sick on that day...sure enough it came, and I was. Pheasant hunting was my addiction. Seeing waves of birds was truly amazing. There were places in Nebraska in the late 80's and early 90's that at the time, were the best in the country. I hunted from Crawford to Falls City. I will never forget those days. Then, the late 90's came, fewer acres of CRP, fewer birds. Soybeans have taken the place of Milo as a rotation crop. The 2000's came, and I was lucky enough to come to Montana, where I still call home. I was promised bird hunting like few ever see, and boy did Montana deliver. Coulee's and stubble fields have been awesome. I admit, I have been spoiled when it comes to hunting, family and friends have always been kind to me, and vice versus. But now, pheasant hunting is in a crisis, weather, habitat, farming. The biggest change of course is farming practices, machinery, fertilizers, ect.. Weather, it changes, always has, always will. The extreme drought still ongoing here where I live in Montana has been very tough on birds, I can only hope they can bounce back, but it is looking tough, for a bird that was introduced to this country. Grouse, quail, they seems to fair better, understandably. The commercialization of bird hunting is another huge change. Right or wrong, that is for a different conversation. The mobility of hunters is another huge change. A person get on a plane in NY or LA and be bird hunting the same day. Vehicles are a lot more reliable, I remember hunting with my dad in a old jeepster commando......well, tried hunting, usually ended up fiddling with jeepster more then hunting, which reminds me, the heaters the new Pu's have are wonderful, compared to that old jeep.
I have hunted thru a few blizzards, worse I recall in Nebraska was the Halloween Blizzard in '91. driving thru closed roads, drifts, white outs, stupid things you do while your young and invincible. I have hunted Montana during a storm or 2, but I am a lot wiser then when I was young. Had a group of friends come a few years back, either 08 or 09, early December, Blizzard hit, high's were in the -25 range, winds were brutal. But, they were damn sure we were going out. I took them to one spot , walked about 100 yards, and told them, this wasn't fair to dogs, birds or me, loaded up and headed back to town. In Montana, weather can kill you, or your pup.
Now, pups. I have truly been blessed with the dogs I have that I have had. My first was a Golden Retriever, folks named him Nugget, lol, he was a good family dog, can't really remember hunting with him, do remember my dad cussing a time or two at him. Then I had a Brittany, Misty was here name, very nice dog, good nose, great family dog, was plagued by seizures, thinking it may have been diabetic, still lived a long good life. Then, I became a young man, I decided on GWP pups. I have owned 4, Grizz, Cody, Rowdy and my current pup, Sport. They have been and continue to be why I hunt, to see their drive and passion in their eyes, I will not brag on each of them, I will say, a bird hunter, would have been proud to call any of these theirs. I have added a new breed to my home, a Large Munsterlander, Lauger, second LM I have owned, Chance was the first. They have been a very neat addition to my hunting, Tremendous nose, retrieving, their attitude is different then my GWP's, more affectionate, always wanting to be close to me, not to say they are at my feet hunting, they range fine, The GWP's on the other hand, all are highly driven, their life is hunting, period.
I worry about my nephew's and nieces and their kids future for hunting, seems like to many family's do not keep that tradition alive any more, very sad. I do all I can to invite my family hear to Montana and experience it when ever they can. But kids are so busy anymore with activities. But strangely, how often do you see kids playing football, basket ball or baseball, just for fun, not in a league. Heck when we were young, we would wear out our lawn playing those things on it. Just my 2 cents. I hope to have my nephew shoot his first buck next fall here in Montana, during the youth season, with his father as a mentor. That is how I was brought up, greeting my dad, grandfather, even great grandfather home after hunts, still have great granddads pic of the '30's at farm up near Clarkson, NE, old ford pu, with a box full of pheasants...lol, I hope I always remember that.....
Well, I could go on, but that is enough for now, how about you, what changes have you seen?
 
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Grew up in a time in ND when at first there were very few Pheasants around, my Uncle Harvey took me on my first hunt when I was in 5 th grade, the birds we got all had ND game and fish leg bands, obviously released.
We all hunted ducks and geese until CRP took off and the pheasants showed up. I remember in the 90s in the winter out near Crosby, Noonan, and Fortuna giant flocks of birds had to be in the thousands, they looked like locusts.
Now I hunt after a devastating series of weather events and hope to see some birds, I usually do. Goto SD twice a year and spend time with guys that enjoy this as much as I do. I don’t think the bird numbers will ever be the same again, I’m not going to stop, even if I never shoot another one. We have been fortunate to expierence the “glory days” of pheasant hunting.
 
Good thread! I remember that Halloween blizzard in '91. I was a Freshman in high school and it cancelled our last football game of the year. But down here in Kansas we got the ice, not the snow you guys had up there. I grew up fishing with my Dad, he wasn't much of a hunter. I was given a shotgun by my grandfather as I went off to college. Got a snow storm and decided to take the gun out and walk. Stumbled upon a rooster, actually stepped right on him, missed with the first shot but connected with the second and have been hooked ever since. Married a farm girl from Western Kansas and can remember in the 2000's when that area was right up there with the best in the nation. Remember one year 14 of us limited out by lunch Thanksgiving day. I teach school, have been for 17 years. I remember when I first started teaching kids would talk about pheasant hunting and numerous kids would miss school the Friday before Opening day to travel. The past few years I can count on one hand how many kids that I teach pheasant hunt. It's a dying tradition I'm afraid to say. Most of these kids now a days don't want to walk their rear off to maybe pull the trigger a time or two. The 3 guys I hunt with and I talk about it all the time. We rarely, if ever, see hunters under the age of 30 out and about chasing pheasants. I've got a 9 year old that is getting his first shotgun tomorrow morning and I'm excited to get him into the sport. However, with the bird numbers it's going to be hard to keep him interested I'm afraid. You got to love to watch the dogs work and I hope he comes to realize that. I hope the bird numbers recover but with all the changes mentioned above it's not looking good.
 
I remember going with my mom to drop my dad off to go out west with his buddies and how disappointed I was because I was too young and how excited when at twelve I got to go. Shot my first bird at thirteen and I was hooked. In the 70's it was expected that the 16 or 17 of us would limit both days on opening weekend. By monday noon we would have 140 or so birds to split up. In the 80's and nineties I had good spots in Iowa, Kansas and even NW Missouri. In fact I had permission to hunt a farm in NW Missouri that gave up a limit of roosters every time we went up there. Slowly Kansas dried completely up. Made several trips where I would not shoot my gun in two days of walking. I truly believe it is not all about the amount of birds I see, but c'mon the threat at least has to be there. In 2000 or so I got a bug to go to SD and planned a trip. I have made 2-3 trips there every year since. On many trips it was not uncommon to see 5-6k birds. I have witnessed flocks up there that were amazing. Slowly it has deteriorated. This year because of weather it was very pedestrian. Even then I had a shot at a limit every day I hunted and will still go as long as I can walk. I will agree with KansasGsp, my sons like to go but are not nearly as into it as I am.
 
Pete died and then Priss died, actually I had to put em down. Now I've got Sam. No other changes that mattered.
 
I think I to remember that blizzard. But I lived in Minnesota. We had 31 inches of snow in 48 hours. I went to hunt a slough on Sunday morning after storm had passed. The slough was in a low spot and completely covered by 6 feet of snow. Here and there a bush top stuck out, but that was all. That was tough. Hunting has changed. Electronic toys are helping kill it off. Wish it was different.
 
When I started getting serious about bird hunting 20 years ago, WIHA was mostly pretty decent and there were birds out there for a person willing to walk them up. Favorable conditions and lots of CRP brought pheasant numbers up to the point where even a dummy like me could easily get a limit, and all of a sudden there was a bird hunter crawling out from behind every fence post. I'll never forget how competitive things were becoming before the droughts just decimated the bird numbers. It was like someone set off a homing beacon, and everybody was coming to Kansas to bird hunt.

Then the drought hit, and bird hunting dried up with it. We soldiered on for a couple years without changing too much. Then we started skipping around the state, chasing what we hoped would be better bird numbers. During this time we "grew up" and had marriages, kids, and got greater responsibilities at work. Slowly, the bird hunting took a back seat. It's been tough trying to resurrect it. Our kids enjoy the novelty of going maybe once a season, but they have other interests that take most of their time and attention. For most of my friends, bird hunting consists of about one or two "boys weekends" a year, and I'm one of only two guys in my circle that has a bird dog anymore.

I still enjoy bird hunting, and I'm glad it isn't as competitive out there as it was becoming about 10 years ago.

Don't get me started on duck hunting though... I feel like reality TV made everyone an expert hard-core duck hunter overnight, which is fine, except the competition there caused the leasing up of a lot of nice spots. I can remember landowners laughing when we asked permission and saying, sure, knock yourself out!!! Still a few spots like that, but many are locked up in leases...

Once again, it looks like upland hunting is hitting a sweet spot. There are just barely enough birds to keep a dog fit, but not enough that people view the state as a "gold rush" like they did at the last big pheasant peak.
 
When I first got into hunting I would hunt with a couple of buddies. We always had coveralls. We had an old wooden dog box and would wrap a rope around it and shove the coveralls into the windows to keep the dogs warm on the trip out. We never bothered with the first 2 or 3 weeks of the season, we were convinced guys out hunting in the heat were just wising the birds up and teaching them to run.
The way the weather has been lately I think you could go most of the year in a sweat shirt. Holes all over the fields if they are badger holes there must be a badger on every corner. Gotta be armadillos, not hardly safe for man nor beast.
In the not to distant future I can see guys out there hunting like something out of the village people. Bare chested and vested. Can see the under armour adds now.
 
I grew up in SW Minnesota and remember going with my dad when I was 4-5 years old. My first year in the field with a gun was in 1956 and I was 10 years old. That means I started hunting at the beginning of the Soil Bank days (1956-1965). There were probably more pheasants in SW Minnesota at that time than there are now in South Dakota. My dad had one prosthetic leg due to a farm accident in 1944 so walking was not easy for him, thus we did a lot of road hunting. Getting a limit never seemed to be much of a problem. Back then no one had a dog so we walked a lot of small patches, ditches and fence lines. As long as the land was not posted, didn't have cattle or growing crops on it you could hunt it. Very little land was posted back then so that is by far the biggest difference between then and now.
 
My pheasant hunting experiences are a little bit different than everybody elses on here, but I have fallen in love with it quick! I am only 27 and grew up doing a lot of fishing, outdoor activities, and playing sports. Anything that could keep me away from being bored inside. However, I didn't grow up hunting. My dad pheasant hunted a little bit until my brother and I got into sports every weekend and all of that.

In 2008 I moved to SD to go to college. Never pheasant hunted that year, but it intrigued me.
In 2009 I asked my dad about one of his old shotguns that had been sitting in the gun case in the basement my entire life. He brought it out to SD and taught me how to shoot it. Never ended up hunting that fall though.
In 2010 I had gotten a group of friends that were "locals" and we would road hunt a lot. That's all they did, and to me road hunting was "hunting" for that first year. Nobody had a dog, and looking back, a lot of what we did was dumb and illegal. At the end of the year we got a trip to the "Golden Triangle" to one of our friends families land and that started a tradition that we do every year now. I remember shooting my first bird road hunting. Then shooting my first bird while walking a field and watching a dog work. Road hunting all of sudden wasn't hunting to me. Walking and working for a bird, while watching a dog was what it was all about. We got a 12 man limit pretty easy.
In 2011 I started getting out hunting on public land every chance I could get. One of my roommates was a diehard waterfowl hunter with the most well behaved, trained, and best overall hunting dog (lab) I've ever been around. I was able to convince him to let me take his dog out with me every afternoon. After that fall that dog and I became best friends, as his owner would say, "you let him run around and have fun every afternoon, I make him swim through freezing cold water every morning."
In 2012 I graduated college and moved to central SD, got a black lab of my own. He is a pheasant hunting machine and I certainly got lucky with him. I will never have as good of a bird dog again in my life. From 2012 to present day, I have hunted every chance I get. Through all of that though, I have moved from SD to MN, gotten married, and had a kid (with another coming any day now). My goal is to get out once a week with the dog because I owe it to him, even if it's just for an hour or two. Hunting time is starting to get harder and harder to come by, and aside from 2 trips a year to SD that I still take, most of my trips are to the closest piece of public land I can find to my house. If we see a few hens that's a good day, if we get a shot at a rooster that's a great day, if we bag a rooster its an unforgettable day.

Now to circle back to the start of this story, since I got back into hunting and kind of dragged my dad into it, he has since gotten back into it. We are closer than we've ever been and enjoy several days a year in the field together now.

The one thing I have noticed in my 8 or so years of pheasant hunting, especially in SD, is the bird numbers are a little less year after year. Not a big difference between each year, but it adds up when we start thinking about what it was 8 years ago.
 
I've only been hunting pheasants for the last 20 years, surprisingly since I grew up in SD then moved to MN after college. But I grew up in western SD hunting sharptail grouse, whitetail, mule deer, pronghorn, and shooting prairie dogs. There were no pheasants in the area I grew up and still almost none but they are getting closer. You guys all know what has happened in the last 20 years, the pheasants were pretty good, then really good, and now pretty poor. But the interesting part is the guy that got me started hunting pheasants and that I still hunt pheasants with in SD every year (except this year I skipped it and stayed in MN). He grew up a farm a little SW of Aberdeen, SD and has been hunting pheasants continuously since about 1950 and tagging along before that. So about a 70-year history of hunting pheasants. I think he's 78 now. He recalls when he was a kid and then first started hunting, the daily limit was something like 5 roosters and 3 hens per day. You can look it up, SD did have limits like that at one time. They had friends come to the farm each year and they would all go out and shoot their limit within a couple hours, go back to the farm and drop the birds off, then go out and shoot another limit. Yeah, not legal, but people did that sort of thing back in the day. And they were hunting a lot of their own land to do it. Some of this could have been Soil Bank days which would be 1960's. Anyway there were so many pheasants back then it was almost ridiculous. And it's obviously been a long, sort of slow decline since then. Many states that used to have good pheasant numbers have basically zero today. Maybe that's where SD will end up as well. Farming practices today, monoculture soybean/corn, pesticides and insecticides, and ethanol mandates have got us to where we are at, IMHO.
 
I just made trip from home up near Glasgow, here in Montana to near Omaha, drove the interstate from Rapid to Mitchell yesterday, then took 81 south thru Yankton, Norfolk, have taken this trip quite a few times, did not see one bird, not one, dead or alive along road.....that is a huge change from not to many years ago. I know this is not an exact state of pheasants, but pretty startling.
 
I started hunting SD ,in earnest, back in the early 90's. Most of our hunting was in the Miller area. We had one farm ( a relative) that we could hunt for a half-day and the rest of the time we resorted to door banging. We didn't pay to hunt.

One year we had land established; the next year some of it would be leased. We always had lots of farmer contacts due to the changing farmer landscape. Most farmers allowed us to hunt and didn't charge, but that changed as the charge idea caught on.

For several years we leased time at a farm for a reasonable fee: $50 to hunt and $50 to stay at a very old and drafty farmhouse. But that ended when the farmer decided to release birds, plow some of the huntable land and was otherwise indifferent to his hunt side business. We decided to leave as the fees climbed and his service declined.


I can recall seeing hundreds of birds leave a corn field, fly over the highway and land in the CRP - must have been at least 500 birds. That CRP went under the plow 7-8 years ago and the area hasn't been the same.
 
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jonnyB said:
I started hunting SD ,in earnest, back in the early 90's. Most of our hunting was in the Miller area. We had one farm ( a relative) that we could hunt for a half-day and the rest of the time we resorted to door banging. We didn't pay to hunt.

One year we had land established; the next year some of it would be leased. We always had lots of farmer contacts due to the changing farmer landscape. Most farmers allowed us to hunt and didn't charge, but that changed as the charge idea caught on.

For several years we leased time a farm for a reasonable fee: $50 to hunt and $50 to stay at a very old and drafty farmhouse. But that ended when the farmer decided to release birds, plow some of the huntable land and was otherwise indifferent to his hunt side business. We decided to leave as the fees climbed and his service declined.


I can recall seeing hundreds of birds leave a corn field, fly over the highway and land in the CRP - must have been at least 500 birds. That CRP went under the plow 7-8 years ago and the area hasn't been the same.
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I have lived here all my life. Pheasant numbers have been up and down. I believe this is the lowest I have seen pheasant numbers, but not only pheasant numbers but jackrabbits are almost gone here. Flickertail gophers are gone here, crow numbers are very small. We have coyotes now that we did not have when I was a kid and probably more deer now. We did not have snow geese when I was a kid and they are everywhere. Things have changed and they will continue to do so.
 
Bird numbers way down. No-till equipment allows farmers to farm through previous unfarmable rough spots that were good habitat. Extensive use of herbicide eliminates weeds in stubble and stalks which vastly reduces habitat.
 
What changes have I seen in pheasant hunting over the years? I started hunting pheasants when I finally moved to a part of the country where they live. I hunted the blizzard of '91, great hunting that year! I have hunted through the great years of southern and southwestern Minnesota. I have done some door knocking and gotten permission more times than not. Nowadays I see less opportunities for hunting on private land without having to pay for the experience. That is a change.

I also spend more time at game farms because I can spend part of a day shooting birds, have success each time I hunt, get home at a decent time to spend time with the family, and not cost me much more than traveling great distances to go to the birds for a long day of hunting and driving. That is a change.

I also see some great changes in clothing, gear, and shells. I am amazed at the quality of boots, I wear now. Dry, comfortable, warm, etc. The clothing fits right, wicks moisture away, keeps me cool or warm depending on the situation and keeps the burrs and stickers away! My guns are much nicer to handle, feel right when I go to shoot, and have incredible abilities with the shells they produce now. That is a change.

My desire to hunt those birds I think is changing as well. I used to like to hunt but now i love to hunt. Hunting used to be an activity that I enjoyed, now I see it as a part of my life. I use it in my vocation and as an opportunity to invest into peoples lives. That is a change.

Finally I see the dogs I hunt over as a change. I started out with the breed I love and I willed that dog to retrieve and help me shoot more birds. Lack of training on me and the dog created some struggles in the field. Now the dogs I have are trained, driven, controlled, and a pure joy to have in the field. I can't imagine hunting without them. That is a change.

So you ask for the changes I have seen, I have seen a lot. Some good some bad. But the only constant in life is change!
 
I wish I could be as lovingly nostalgic as most of the people in here....

But my view on this is a little different. I'm 38 years old and was pretty slow to start my hardcore pheasant addiction. I was more interested in girls, parties and mischief than to bother myself with pheasant hunting growing up. I deer hunted, and Ice fishing was my passion....but that was the extent of it. Little did I know, I squandered the best hunting opportunity that I will likely ever see during that time.

I got talked into going to SD in 2010 and figured, why not? I was now a family man and had a couple young kids at home that I needed a break from. Little did I know how that trip would change my life. I have since acquired a dog, and made a trip or two to SD every year, along with pounding public land in central Minnesota in the fall.

There has been no real "hayday" in my pheasant hunting career. I have only seen a drastic decline since I started. I hope that the times that I am bringing my 10 year old hunting with me now, will be enough to spark his interest. If not for the bird hunting then to at least hang out with his old man.

I am usually fairly optimistic, however the past 9 years of observing the destruction of habitat, the slide downhill of the pheasant population.... maybe pen raised birds are the solution to getting our youth interested in the sport. I am hooked, I have been bitten hard by the bug. The view of a sun setting over the prairie while your dog goes from loping around to straight backed, zig-zagging back and forth, your finger tense on the safety of your shotgun and heart starting to pump... well there you go. I want that for my son. I want that for your grandchildren.

I havent seen alot, but what I have seen is not good.
 
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