Killing Pheasants Isn't As Easy As It Used To Be

The numbers are down everywhere. For a while you couldn’t pick up an outdoor publication or go to a hunting web site without reading the blaring headlines about the precipitous drop in pheasant numbers. What should we expect? Habitat is disappearing faster than Rolaids at a Chili Cook-Off. There’s no where for the pheasants to nest. There’s no where for them to hide. And when all the crops are picked there’s no where for them to go.

A few years ago when the cover began getting plowed under, burned and scraped away there were still plenty of birds and the limited amount of cover concentrated them. You could pick any little patch of grass or cattail and flush some roosters. Such is not the case anymore. The nesting success with the lack of good nesting cover has knocked the numbers of pheasants down to the point where there aren’t many birds around anymore.

I used to hunt in Iowa. It’s where I was born and spent the first 27 years of my life. Pheasant hunting was always good in Iowa. No longer. My last trip there for pheasant hunting I stomped through the limited cover for two days and never shot a rooster. There were hawks on power poles everywhere and I spotted a half dozen piles of feathers where these raptors had picked off a hen pheasant.

I still hunt Minnesota and the Dakotas but it is getting tough in these states as well. Minnesota is losing cover and the spring nesting success has been poor due to weather these past few years. You have to work hard for a limit of two roosters. 

South Dakota hunting around Aberdeen is still decent but even though Brown County still has more pheasant per acre than anywhere in the world, the lower numbers mean you might have to spend another hour in the field to get your three birds.

I don’t blame the landowners for this situation. They have to make a buck and when you think about it, with crop prices where they are there is little incentive to set aside an acre of land for conservation. Farmers for years were getting beat up by low crop prices and now when they can make a decent dime from planting they are striking when the iron is hot. Who knows how long the prices will stay high.

Should I blame the government? I might as well. They’re the ones subsidizing ethanol fuel which drives the price of corn up which makes it more lucrative to plant as much as possible, even on marginal land. But then I’m told it’s more complicated than that.

I’ll just have to be patient until the pendulum swings and we can get the amount of cover back to higher levels through incentives. We love the government when a program is working and we hate the institution when their programs are faltering. Right now their CRP program is a joke, but someday I might get to hunt Iowa again.  For now I’m just going to leave that one bird they have down there alone.