What went wrong?

C

captaincoot

Banned
Iowas becoming a dessert for wildlife:eek: My area deer, waterfowl, pheasant, rabbit nothings out there. I have had allittle luck with pheasant. One greenwing teal this year:( Browndog retrieved it like a pro:thumbsup: I ussually get 20-50 ducks. It's dry but we've had drier years and I did fine and never had to travel over 5 miles. That one duck had to travel 40 miles to the Iowa great lake region. Deer hunters are seeing very few. Guess theres next year.
Somethings wrong what do you guys think it is? Management, Farmers spraying, predators, or just no one cares if hunting leaves Iowa. Sorry Had to vent my bad duck season somewhere:)
 
ia hunting

yes things aren't good. what part of the state are you from? i live close to lake red rock. i have had some luck with ducks there. sadly not a phesant anywhere:mad:. as far as the why, well you named then all!:rolleyes:
 
Coot -

We've deer up the wazoo down here. Locals are slaying the ducks too. I see them on nearly all ponds while driving to pheasant hunting fields as well.

Pheasants, unfortunately, have certainly taken a big hit this year. We've all discussed the various reasons for such . . . I won't poke that sleeping dog.

I haven't seen one -- not one -- rabbit while bird hunting this year. Crazy.
 
been driving in country alot on pipeline patrols have not seen ANY pheasant in fresh snow. seen very few deer also. lots a yote tracks cutting across the feilds.
 
My thoughts

Hello all. I will toss out a couple of thoughts to stimulate our conversations. Management practices across all of our midwestern states has been a sore subject concerning deer. Wisconsin hiring "Dr. Deer", Michigan's numerous expensive studies, Iowa's 1st season harvest down 10%.:eek: Our locals are reporting some success but also that deer numbers are way down.

I live for bird hunting. Our perfect storm of weather-winter and spring, habitat losses, farming practice changes including the loss of hay and alfalfa ground, and finally spraying practices.

I arrived at the spraying practices from my own family farm. We farm for birds. They are not here. We used to spray our crops. As you farmers know, with applicator law changes and the $7 to $8 per acre elevator prices--most of us "hire" it done now. The sprayers in my area are 60' to 80' in boom width and travel 7 to 12 miles per hour. At the time of year we spray beans and corn, chicks are 3 weeks old at best. This puts them in the quail size of development. In my best analytical thinking--a bloom of chicks and mother hen could possibly get hit by an application sprayer 3 times before escaping a field. When we sprayed--16' boom was big and we traveled with tractor at 5 mph. That's quite a difference.:mad:

Here's my dilemma. How can we change this. I cannot legally apply the new herbicides my crops require. The elevator takes you on a requested basis. First come-first serve. There is no waiting for chicks to develop.
 
Should tax more for tiling it all and put it into habitat fund. 10 more years river I pasture cows on will be worthless. It flows high and is cutting wide from the extra flow.
Nice to hear ducks are around. Just one of those years dry and decided to keep moving south. Kossuth county wheres I'm from iowa labs.
 
KBell said:
Here's my dilemma. How can we change this. I cannot legally apply the new herbicides my crops require. The elevator takes you on a requested basis. First come-first serve. There is no waiting for chicks to develop.
Click to expand...

Why not get your applicator license and spray your own?
 
I traveled again today to get into birds. I had a good day. For my area there a so few birds its hard to believe. I went out after the snow around here looking for tracks or birds out feeding in 20 miles no birds or tracks. :confused::confused::confused:
 
After some serious thought I come to the conclusion that we Iowa hunters are just to good:thumbsup: We killed pretty much everything in the state:eek::)
 
KBell said:
I live for bird hunting. Our perfect storm of weather-winter and spring, habitat losses, farming practice changes including the loss of hay and alfalfa ground, and finally spraying practices.

Here's my dilemma. How can we change this. I cannot legally apply the new herbicides my crops require. The elevator takes you on a requested basis. First come-first serve. There is no waiting for chicks to develop.
Click to expand...

KBell, more details here would help. Loss of alfalfa and hay ground is going to be a major factor. what % do you think it is in last 10 years?

Are you saying the sprayer machine is killing birds? I would think the big sprayers are less of a disturbance for animals with bigger booms they creat less tracks in the field.

What about "the new chemicals your crops require"? That's what I would be concerned about.

If your crops are beans and corn there probably aren't too many broods in those in June anyway?
 
I think the real question might be "What went right?". Short and flip , not much. By focusing on what is still right or at least OK, currently, analyzing how and why what works is still there and working, gives us a chance to use incentives and education to encourage techniques which will result in the same. Might sound simple, but it's going to take dollars to fix this. Along with public opinion. Ifyou pay farmers to grow iron weeds, what they make on corn, we would have a lot of iron weeds to hunt in!
 
oldandnew said:
I think the real question might be "What went right?". Short and flip , not much. By focusing on what is still right or at least OK, currently, analyzing how and why what works is still there and working, gives us a chance to use incentives and education to encourage techniques which will result in the same. Might sound simple, but it's going to take dollars to fix this. Along with public opinion. Ifyou pay farmers to grow iron weeds, what they make on corn, we would have a lot of iron weeds to hunt in!
Click to expand...

Bingo! You nailed it.
 
captaincoot said:
Should tax more for tiling it all and put it into habitat fund. 10 more years river I pasture cows on will be worthless. It flows high and is cutting wide from the extra flow.
Nice to hear ducks are around. Just one of those years dry and decided to keep moving south. Kossuth county wheres I'm from iowa labs.
Click to expand...

hey coot i think the tax should be $5 per foot. how many feet did you put in this fall 28,000:confused:
 
When we still had pheasants around where I live and the chemical sprays were taking off it affected the birds more than they realized.I walked the fence rows the year after everybody started using sprays real heavy and out of 15 nests that had an8 egg average at least 3 eggs were either soft or so hard the chick could not break the shell.I know this because I kept track of the days and went back for hatching and saved at least 25 chicks because they could not break the shell.Some of them I was too late for and they were already dead when I got there.They were fully formed but could not break the shell because it was so hard,even I had trouble breaking them that's how hard they were.I know some will be mad at me but I'm just telling what I found over a 5 yr. period.
 
Bad Winter. On my daughters birthday 12-12-10 ( 6 5th grade girls trapped in my house all weekend) we had a pheasant killing blizzard and it did not let up for three months. A majority of the hens were gone before I was done hunting at the end of last season. Pheasant hunting will be better next year.
 
reddog said:
Environmental genocide. Whos responsible? Who knows..
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ADM, Monsanto, and Cargill. They did it with malice and aforethought. The bitter irony is none of us has been to ANWAR to see the caribou, but instead the environmental lobby seems to be content to allow the lower 48 to be turned into one large Round Up Ready cornfield. Hey, did you see where the polar bears are so overcrowded they have started eating each other?
 
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