pheasant decline in MN

[sandbur]

Mix in a food plot nearby and you will have all the pheasants in the section!

I have had all of the pheasants in 3 or 4 sections during some winters. Probably most winters.

 

[sandbur]

Does it seem strange to anyone that the pheasant limit was set at 2 and the deer limit had been 7 or 8?

 

[SD51555]

If you're concerned about this, I'd suggest you start taking pictures of the WMAs in the winter. There a plenty of them in SW MN that I've never seen a pheasant. I drive all over the place in ND and SD, and I see birds where there is a mix of tree, shrub, slough, and ag. I see more pheasants around groves than i see on WMAs. I wish I had been doing this all along. The pheasant pops in ND and SD have been tough the last couple years, and I still see dozens of birds at a crack from border to border along I-29. But you also see cedars, spruces, dogwoods, russian olive, willows, all mixed into slough edges and grass lands.

I had a link to a pdf from a biologist that made this very argument, but I've since deleted it because I've given up on this.

 

[wklman]

I use to have unreal pheasant numbers at my place until I had a neighbor move in that walked every fence row and shot both hens and roosters. The winters of '12 and '13 didn't help either. I'm hoping the hen and roster I had around this spring were able to raise a nice clutch of young ones. I've got a pretty much perfect set-up for pheasants if I can keep the neighbors at bay for a year or 2.

 

[Freeborn]

There are large tracts of wildlife areas in Minnesota that are planted in NWSG but are not producing pheasants. I think it is the lack of diversity and therefore quality habitat. Most of these wildlife areas get little attention after they are planted and should be burned and woody cover added. One thing I am learning on my place is NWSG alone is not the answer as NWSGs are not the best nesting cover. Cool season grasses are better nesting cover. Pheasant chicks need bugs and grasses they can walk though to survive, this means keeping thatch under control in these areas and promoting diversity including forbs. Ultra thick grasses are great for adult birds but not for chicks so you need both.

Lack of continued maintenance and lack of proactive improvement of the land for pheasants is probably one of the reason there is a lack of birds. I can tell on my place I need to be more proactive at adding too and maintaining my grasses.

 

[bowhunternw]

I don't think wma's are the demise of the pheasant. What percentage of pheasant range is state owned, I am just guessing at less than 1 percent. Most of the wma's where I used to hunt pheasant were the best habitat in the area, not by design but by default. Seemed like they all contained a large cattail slough. I will definitely agree with you that these vast expanses of grass are virtually worthless, I don't actually remember any wma's like that. There does seem to be a push by someone to make all grasslands into a monoculture of prairie grass. Even happening to crp land, they have make sure to terminate all woody vegetation. A nice mix of habitat is beneficial to multiple species. I did hear that they are trying to revive the roadsides for wildlife program. IMO it wouldn't take a lot to revive pheasant country but it does need help. The best hunting I remember was overgrown draws, ditchs early season then cattails and groves late season.

 

[SD51555]

When we enrolled a few acres of my grandma's land into CRP, we were told we could not plant any trees or shrubs in there. I never fully understood why. I wonder if they'd tell us to cut out all the sumac, plum, apple, chokecherry, dogwood, and cranberry I planted out there if we wanted to make the rest of it CRP? "Yeah, you can enroll this, but you have to get rid of all that food and shelter first."

 

[SD51555]

I wish we'd have never done it. Between having no rights to improve it and the warning letters about weeds, it's been more of a pain than the few dollars are worth. It would have never been farmed anyway. It was actually a couple acres on the opposite side of a drainage ditch that my uncle couldn't farm. The neighbor was about 20 yards over the property line for years with his field and paying no rent.

That could have had 10' tall black spruce and assorted other things producing by now.

 

[wooduck]

Pheasant are indicators of where deer will head in all farm country, Clean fields no weeds , doze the woody cover for more field, in the case of pheasant add in predation , fox, skunk, coyote, hawks, owls, Many years ago hawks , owls were shot on sight or affected by ddt now that fur prices are at rock bottom theres very little trapping , The pheasant boom is over for Minnesota and wont ever be back , they can throw money at it forever and it will not change with no cover and high predation , Dayton wants his waterways wont work either it will just concentrate the preditors in that little cover

 

[leexrayshady]

Wade you should have seen it back in the mud 2000's. I jumped nearly 100 birds down in the cattails by the river, but we had corn within flying distance and awesome winters, last year I didn't flush a one. Food and cover is definitely a big key

 

[wiscwhip]

I witnessed the demise of the pheasant in WI. When I was a young kid we could pretty much count on walking our fencelines (75 acres) and getting a couple birds (if Dad and I could hit them anyway). By the time I was in my late teens/early twenties I could hit those same fencelines a dozen times a year and not see a bird. WI pretty much went to a "put and take" situation with pheasants sometime in the late 70's/early 80's. We called them "retarded Poynette chickens" because they were raised in DNR pens and about as smart as a yard bird. They'd hang up on the first fenceline they ran into and not know what to do. Winter survival was nil (due to genetics of the birds mainly). WI did go to raising wild strain birds from IA a number of years ago, and that was a pretty successful program on a very small scale....but the days of having decent pheasant hunting in WI (on any kind of scale anyway) are long gone (except on private reserves).

I fear MN is on that same path.

I saw this as well stu. When I was very young and my family lived in the Kenosha/Lake Geneva area, I remember going on hunts along the State Line Road on the IL border. The birds were so thick you would have thought you were in IA or SD. It was nothing to walk one fenceline or alfalfa field and kick up a dozen different roosters and twice as many hens. 3 or 4 guys could get their 2 bird limits of roosters in an hour. Then came the urban sprawl and the idea that eliminating fencelines and tilling right up to the shoulder of the road was the new norm for farming, thus began the demise of WI pheasant hunting. Once we permanently moved to Juneau Co in 1980, it was primarily all put and take hunting, with birds supplied by the Poynette Game Farm to the local sportsman's clubs to raise and release them. Birds were dumber than a stone and would rather run than fly. I can't count the number of times our springer spaniel basically had one in his mouth before it would leave the ground. The hunting continues to be like this to this day, only worse because they raise and release less birds now than they did back in those days due to increased cost per bird.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

From a different area of the country ...... The best pheasant hunting in Pa. used to be in the southern counties where most of the big ag. area was. It was so good in the 60's & EARLY 70's that " The American Sportsman " with Curt Gowdy came to film a pheasant hunt in Lancaster county. Bing Crosby and band leader Phil Harris were the featured guest hunters. I watched the show with my Dad.

Today, much of Lancaster county is no longer ag. , but is all housing developments, strip malls, huge shopping centers, office buildings, and pavement. The ag that remains in Pa. ( for the most part ) is " clean-farmed ". When the corn is harvested, the field looks like a military boot-camp haircut. The old days of bent-over corn stalks ( cover ) and scattered loose grain laying around, are gone. Pheasants and rabbits could always be found in good numbers in those old-time corn fields. Lack of brushy fencerows and weed fields also has led to the decline of pheasants here. In fact ........ I haven't even HEARD anyone speak of pheasant hunting here for years now. They still do the put & take stocking on certain state land, but the available acreage is very low compared to when farmers would let you hunt if you just asked. It never hurt to drop off a bird and a couple rabbits either. Show the farmer you appreciate his land and the chance to hunt it.

 

[Freeborn]

I’m fortunate that my area is still producing wild birds and they are very Wiley. Much of the natural reproduction is because of the very large cattail slews and wooded cover that are in the area. The tuff part for me is to figure out how to get those birds to move out of the slews and into my grasses during hunting season. Corn has been a large positive as they associate the corn and a small wooded slew I have near it as prime cover. After several hot spots I am left with allot of grass area where the birds are absent during the hunting season. Other than my hotspots the best hunting is in my slew which you cannot walk until it freezes. Late season hunting is OK but I prefer a cool autumn day.

By the way, I more often than not leave my gun at camp and just let my dogs hunt.