Ever heard a pheasant?

[norcalcy]

Active population of both turkeys and pheasants in the open grassy/oak tree space near my home here in northern California. Turkeys seem like they are growing in number yearly. The pheasants seem to be doing better now that the drought has eased a little bit. Love the sound the OP refers to. Hear it mostly in the spring (Feb. - May).

 

[VeloClone]

While it may be a little sad I'm not going to bemoan the rebound of a native bird to the detriment of a non-native bird.

 

[Turn2]

good farming practices if you are farming, bad if you are a pheasant. Pheasants do not pay the bills.

I bet you don't grow cover crops, do you?

 

[dafarmer]

It's all Obama's fault. That makes as much sense as the other dumb excuses. Not all farmers till every piece of ground they farm. Wet ,heavy spring rains and the rapid growth of the turkey population have killed off most of the numbers. Lack of habitat has also hurt(new housing and business development and mowing all the ditches hasn't helped. More corn means more cover and food.:skeptical:

 

[DeereClone]

Pheasant numbers are good in southern iowa. We go hunting down there - a lot of CRP and really good bird numbers the last few years.

Up here on the flat prairie of NC IA, we have less habitat but have been putting some CRP waterways and buffers in for habitat and releasing pheasants we buy and raise. It has been hit and miss with the tough springs we have had, but I think we are making progress.

Cool to see the birds back!

 

[ISUser]

There was a pheasant in my backyard yesterday morning. It was suprising, as I live in a residential area... I went on the deck to try and get it to cackle and fly away, but it just ducked down really low. I about hit it was a golf ball off my deck, and it still wouldn't move.

 

[BCClone]

I farm on the Iowa/minny border. Over the last 15 years there has been a boatload of wetland and dnr ground go in around me. After much of this happened, the pheasant numbers dropped. I asked some dnr guys and they told me the stretch of around 98-01 winters had 3 years with almost no snow cover. I remember because I never broke the blower out. Lack of cover killed of the pheasants along with massive hunting. I couldn't get more than 2-3 hours of work done without hunters stopping me to ask if they could hunt my ground. At the time MN was a week infront of us, I would always get asked by people with minny plates to hunt that week, didn't know they were in Iowa.

 

[00clone]

It's all Obama's fault. That makes as much sense as the other dumb excuses. Not all farmers till every piece of ground they farm. Wet ,heavy spring rains and the rapid growth of the turkey population have killed off most of the numbers. Lack of habitat has also hurt(new housing and business development and mowing all the ditches hasn't helped. More corn means more cover and food.:skeptical:

Not all, but some certainly do. I get a nice addition of topsoil to my backyard every year from the runoff of the farmer behind me that plants right thru an obvious ravine that he gets ****ty yields from anyway. It'd be a great buffer strip for habitat, and he'd be doing his cropland better in the long run, but screw it....seed is cheap, plant 'er thru and let the next generation worry about their missing topsoil. A few weeks ago, he scraped up a pickup truck load of corn stover that had piled up next to his fence from the runoff.

 

[arobb]

1. Turkeys don't eat pheasants.
2. Pheasants can't nest in tilled cropland.

The landscape is what has changed since the days of high pheasant numbers in Iowa. The smaller farms from several decades back had hay fields, pasture, small grains, set aside, and weedy corn and bean fields that provided cover for wildlife.
Conversion of these smaller farms to large corn and bean monocultures, the transition to larger farm equipment and the elimination of fencerows to create larger fields, along with clean farming with improved herbicides and pesticides is what has hurt pheasants the most.

 

[CloneIce]

It's all Obama's fault. That makes as much sense as the other dumb excuses. Not all farmers till every piece of ground they farm. Wet ,heavy spring rains and the rapid growth of the turkey population have killed off most of the numbers. Lack of habitat has also hurt(new housing and business development and mowing all the ditches hasn't helped. More corn means more cover and food.:skeptical:

Habitat is the biggest reason for the decline in population. Look how much CRP ground was lost in the past couple decades. There are other issues, such as weather and turkeys (but wet springs are normal for the Midwest) but habitat is the biggest one. This isn't blaming farmers, it's just stating a fact.

 

[1100011CS]

I prefer the sound of quail

 

[cyclone101]

I'm not sold on the habitat excuse. It might have a little to do with lower numbers up north where good csr soils are everywhere and everything gets farmed roadside to roadside but in southern iowa there are no pheasants. I can count the number of hen pheasants I've seen in the last 6 months on one hand and we have more crp, alfalfa, pasture, waterways, terraces, and ditches than anybody... all of which should be prime pheasant ground. I haven't bird hunted in 5 or 6 years because I would feel bad shooting one, that's how few we have.

Farminclone, you said you've found good bird numbers in So. IA, send some to Ringgold, Decatur, and Union counties plz.

 

[PlanoClone]

More corn means more cover and food.:skeptical:

I guess if farmers don't harvest the corn, yes. Not much cover in the winter from the remnants though.

 

[CyclonePassion]

I was an Animal Ecology major. Senior year in my Wildlife Management course the state biologist from the DNR who leads the small game roadside counts (believe it was Bruce Ehresman or Todd Bogenschutz) come present to us on population management and this exact question came up. He said the data shows that the biggest cause for pheasant population decline was weather. In the early to mid 2000s, Iowa had something like 3 or 4 of it's 10 worst winters (snow cover) in the history of the state. That combined with wet springs did a number on the population. Milder winters these last few years have really helped the birds come back. Habitat/farming practices play some role, but not as significantly as weather conditions.

 

[cyclone101]

I was an Animal Ecology major. Senior year in my Wildlife Management course the state biologist from the DNR who leads the small game roadside counts (believe it was Bruce Ehresman or Todd Bogenschutz) come present to us on population management and this exact question came up. He said the data shows that the biggest cause for pheasant population decline was weather. In the early to mid 2000s, Iowa had something like 3 or 4 of it's 10 worst winters (snow cover) in the history of the state. That combined with wet springs did a number on the population. Milder winters these last few years have really helped the birds come back. Habitat/farming practices play some role, but not as significantly as weather conditions.

This more in line with my theory.

 

[Sparkplug]

Former farm acres being platted for housing has contributed to less wildlife and changes in water flow. Rain doesn't soak in through concrete.

 

[TXCyclones]

I'm not sold on the habitat excuse. It might have a little to do with lower numbers up north where good csr soils are everywhere and everything gets farmed roadside to roadside but in southern iowa there are no pheasants. I can count the number of hen pheasants I've seen in the last 6 months on one hand and we have more crp, alfalfa, pasture, waterways, terraces, and ditches than anybody... all of which should be prime pheasant ground. I haven't bird hunted in 5 or 6 years because I would feel bad shooting one, that's how few we have.

Farminclone, you said you've found good bird numbers in So. IA, send some to Ringgold, Decatur, and Union counties plz.

Start putting out more lime on your fields. Pheasants need lime in their diets to make the eggs solid. That's actually why they originally flourished in the Midwest and Dakotas because of the lime content in the soil. I think I recall seeing that lime content was lower in southern Iowa.

 

[stateofmind]

I'm surprised there are people in Iowa that haven't heard a pheasant tbh.

Oh, I'm sure I've heard them in the past, but can't believe I don't remember it. I won't forget it going forward, almost like not remembering what a peacock sounds like. Growing up in the 70s it seemed that pheasants flew across the road every time we went for a drive. I've been hunting a few times, but never remembered what they sounded like when they flew off, other than the flap of the wings startling me, or the shotguns going off.

 

[mcfaj0dm]

Absolutely FALSE. Pheasant numbers have not declined because of turkeys, pheasants have declined due to poor farming practices that take away any cover that they use to survive during winter.

Agree with ChadM that "poor" farming practices isn't exactly putting it right.

But the lack of cover is absolutely the culprit. Also has every bit as much to do with nesting grounds as it does winter cover - perhaps more. Fencerow to fence row crops leave little for cover for nesting, except the lower areas and drainage areas. So when you have particularly wet springs, you see a more severe population hit as the nesting is more susceptible.

 

[cyclonespiker33]

Ever herd a peasant?

Those common-folk are hard to round up.