Pheasant season - Page 1

Hometown » Iowa

Posted: 10/26/2014 4:53:19 PM EDT

Damn, opening weekend of Pheasant season and I didn't go. I even forgot about it until today.
Remember when opening weekend was a BIG deal? Hunters in from all over, families, small groups of friends, Platoon size "army's" going through every field and slough? Every small town motel full, restaurants and bars busy. Every sporting goods store busy with licenses and all the things associated with the hunt. Hunters breakfasts, long tailfeather contests. My cousins used to come up from Florida every year for opening week, I even got to get out of school for a couple days just to go with them!
I miss those days.

Now you probably would have a hard time even getting permission to hunt, even if there was cover to push or birds to hunt.

Posted: 10/26/2014 5:28:22 PM EDT

[#1]

With the declining pheasant population in Iowa, most of my family hunts in South Dakota now.

Posted: 10/26/2014 5:45:01 PM EDT

[#2]

I remember those days too. Frankly I don't miss them since there are more spots for me to walk that haven't been walked 10 times already. A lot of it is because bird numbers are down and some of it has to do with the older hunters dying off and the younger crowd just looks at hunting different.

Posted: 10/26/2014 5:48:05 PM EDT

[#3]

I've seen a whole 2 pheasants in my area this year.. :(

Posted: 10/26/2014 5:52:54 PM EDT

[#4]

I took one yesterday my dog is young and dumb. He jumped 2 way out in front of me. Saw 5 roosters total. Walked morning and then at about 330.

Today did about an hour of walking didn't see a damn thing. I don't think they like jumping when the wind is way up. Up here in the northwest there is a strong population this year thanks to high pelt costs of coyotes last year.

Posted: 10/26/2014 6:52:04 PM EDT

[#5]

Its been a couple years since I even got my hunting license. Last bird I saw was four years ago. Since usually fish near dnr land was always seeing birds until the last few years. :(

Since seen a fair amount of rabbit and squirrel this year at least tempted to get my license again this year.

Posted: 10/26/2014 7:29:20 PM EDT

[#6]

I hunted ducks out at Chichaqua this morning and heard a fair amount of shooting from the ditch chicken crowd.

Posted: 10/26/2014 8:41:40 PM EDT

[#7]

I saw 2 roosters yesterday on my way to carroll it has been 12 years since I went pheasant hunting I asked the gf father if he sees many from the combine and he says not like he used to

Posted: 10/26/2014 9:27:45 PM EDT

[#8]

They had to Try and bring in the fucking turkeys.....
Ever since the pheasant population has tanked.
Turkeys will kill anything they feel is a threat.

Call bullshit if you will,I have hunted all my life and never saw the population
go down like it did till "wild turkeys" made a huge comeback.

Posted: 10/27/2014 2:50:39 PM EDT

[#9]

While the turkeys may have had an impact habitat loss has had an even bigger impact. When I started hunting pheasant in the 70's the population was plentiful. Once fencelines were removed as farms grew in size and every available inch of land was farmed as well as fall tillage the population declined. CRP helped but you don't see as much of that as you used to, at least in my area. Add to that bad spring weather for several years in a row and you have a major decline. I honestly don't see a solid recovery anytime soon.

Posted: 10/27/2014 4:52:13 PM EDT

[#10]

Quote History

Quoted:
While the turkeys may have had an impact habitat loss has had an even bigger impact. When I started hunting pheasant in the 70's the population was plentiful. Once fencelines were removed as farms grew in size and every available inch of land was farmed as well as fall tillage the population declined. CRP helped but you don't see as much of that as you used to, at least in my area. Add to that bad spring weather for several years in a row and you have a major decline. I honestly don't see a solid recovery anytime soon.

View Quote

Agreed. It's habitat. How many times do you drive down the road and see a big pile of trees and dirt piled up in a field? Yep, farmers destroying habitat to get a few more acres in. That habitat is not coming back. The economics just won't allow it.

All my bird hunting is on the preserves. I'm not going to hump ditches for eight hours to get one shot in. It's just not worth it.

Add in a completely incompetent DNR and you have no pheasants in Iowa with no improvement in sight.

Posted: 10/28/2014 9:51:37 AM EDT

[#11]

Quote History

Quoted:

They had to Try and bring in the fucking turkeys.....

Ever since the pheasant population has tanked.

Turkeys will kill anything they feel is a threat.

Call bullshit if you will,I have hunted all my life and never saw the population

go down like it did till "wild turkeys" made a huge comeback.

View Quote

I'll call bullshit on this. The decline in Pheasant population has very little to do with Turkeys, at least the feathered kind. The Pheasant population fell when the Government propped up the bullshit Ethanol production. The cover ground, habitat for Pheasant, was put into production for Subsidized corn growing and destroyed the population. Ethanol is as big a scam as Global Warming. It only served to push corn prices to inflated values and destroyed the environment rather than helped it.

As for Turkeys killing anything that is a threat, I doubt that too. I've seen flocks of Turkeys, Pheasants, and Hungarian Partridge feeding together in the same fields of picked corn. Research out of Wisconsin has proven that wild Turkeys can survive on very little and therefore do not become aggressive toward upland birds. The Wild Turkey population has been very high far longer than the Pheasant population has been declining.

It's loss of habitat, nothing else. Blame your neighbor Farmers greed, and the Governments stupidity for promoting a Energy source that is far more damaging than it is helpful.There are Ethanol plants built on areas that were Sloughs full of Pheasant and Huns 20 years ago. There are no fence rows left.The marginal corn ground has been put to the plow and ruined the habitat for Pheasant.Turkeys will roost in damn near anything, Pheasant are more selective and need water more often.

If I were as heavily subsidized as most farmers are, I would be pretty well off, like they are. But, the Government pays them to say they have a job and work hard, I have a job and work hard, wheres my subsidy? The Government should pay for my fuel to go to work, give me low/no interest loans and support me too. Sorry, I hate "Agricultural Welfare".

Posted: 10/28/2014 10:21:53 AM EDT

[#12]

I have noticed a lot more pheasants, throughout the summer and through harvest this year so far, in SE Iowa. The DNR road survey in August had a 151% increase from their 2013 numbers, so the population is trying to make a comeback.

I haven't been pheasant hunting in almost 10 years, but with all the birds I have been seeing, I have thought about actually making a go of it this year

.

Posted: 10/28/2014 10:29:15 AM EDT

[#13]

In my area I see shit loads of eagles and hawks. When I was a kid you almost never saw an eagle and maybe every once in a while a hawk. There also were no coyote in the area to speak of and now they are in high numbers as well.

Posted: 10/28/2014 12:25:34 PM EDT

[#14]

Do your part this winter and kill as many coyotes as you can!

Posted: 10/28/2014 1:05:05 PM EDT

[#15]

I intend to this year, need to get me a caller.

Posted: 10/28/2014 2:16:31 PM EDT

[#16]

Quote History

Quoted:

Do your part this winter and kill as many coyotes as you can!

View Quote

Feral Cats too. If it's more than a 1/4 mile from a farmstead, it's a "Ditch Tiger"

Posted: 10/30/2014 7:10:44 PM EDT

[#17]

We have 10 acres of mixed grass and brush. Beside me is 20 acres of CRP and another 240 acres of CRP across the road, we have owned this land for 12 years and have done some habitat improvement and food plots. When we first got here I could go out and take a rooster anytime I wanted without a lot of effort and point out 2 separate coveys of Quail, (never shot any of the Quail) Now it seems I might hear a few roosters in the spring but I haven't shot one on my property in 3 years. The Quail, theyre just gone.

Posted: 10/30/2014 10:16:43 PM EDT

[#18]

As much as I like pheasant hunting I still think it's a good thing the numbers are down-maybe we can bring back native gamebirds like prairie chickens. Can't ignore the fact that while they've been here for centuries pheasants are an introduced species. Now that there's more room maybe we should try a reintroduction effort on native birds that taste good.

Posted: 11/2/2014 7:52:50 PM EDT

[#19]

So is the dnr survey accurate. I'm headed to sw iowa for thanksgiving. Havent brought my shotgun for the past 4 years. Is this the year to pack it?

Posted: 11/2/2014 9:14:30 PM EDT

[#20]

Quote History

Quoted:
So is the dnr survey accurate. I'm headed to sw iowa for thanksgiving. Havent brought my shotgun for the past 4 years. Is this the year to pack it?

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numbers in my area are better than the last couple years, don't know about the SW part of the state though.

Posted: 11/2/2014 9:46:53 PM EDT

[#21]

Quote History

Quoted:

numbers in my area are better than the last couple years, don't know about the SW part of the state though.

View Quote View All Quotes

View All Quotes

Quote History

Quoted:

Quoted:
So is the dnr survey accurate. I'm headed to sw iowa for thanksgiving. Havent brought my shotgun for the past 4 years. Is this the year to pack it?

numbers in my area are better than the last couple years, don't know about the SW part of the state though.

NE IA is among the worst in the state, and I see a lot of birds on my way to work. I'd take it, and if you decide not to hunt no big deal. It would suck to get there, see birds and have no way to shoot one.

Posted: 11/3/2014 10:04:32 AM EDT

[#22]

I have been asking my farmers along the way, lots more hens getting flushed out of fields this year.

Posted: 11/3/2014 10:43:04 AM EDT

[#23]

Got to northern Kossuth County Saturday. Two of us and the dog. Got three birds, flushed several more. Tough hunting, they were running instead of flushing and the wind didn't help. We were in chest high grass most of the day. Great habitat but tough to wade thru. Best luck I've had on non-preserve hunting in ages.

Posted: 11/3/2014 11:44:27 AM EDT

[#24]

Quote History

Quoted:
I have been asking my farmers along the way, lots more hens getting flushed out of fields this year.

View Quote

We've been seeing a ton of hens, and quite a few roosters, in our fields so far this year. Saturday morning there were two groups of pheasants in two spots where we had been unloading into semis the previous day. One group had 7 roosters and 10 hens and the other group had about the same.

Posted: 11/3/2014 1:56:11 PM EDT

[#25]

Yeah, still hard to tell with roughly half the corn crop still out there in Eastern IA..... and lots of corn piles on the shoulders and at bin sites

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