December pheasant hunting should not be allowed.

[1pheas4]

[quote=RK Special K;116160]1pheas4, I truely respect and appreciate your opinions, and in VERY isolated areas, pheasants can be helped in "the east". I do however strongly disagree that "despite an increasing human population, record amounts of pheasants.......could be a thing of the future"[in the east]./QUOTE]

RK, I've been told to put the optimism away a few years ago. Indeed (for the most part) I have. My post wasn't meant to hand out a dose of "feel good". Instead, I was addressing the fact that it comes down to land management.

What good will it do to remove most of us, and have nothing but fields of emerging buck throne and honey suckle?

I've watch enormous groups of wild pheasants fly into cattails to roost outside my motel room in the town of Mitchel SD. In the 1990's I used to flush healthy numbers of wild pheasants just outside my cousins door, 20 min. west of downtown Chicago.

Managing the land made this happen, not removal of most humans. Land management is the answer. I believe increasing wildlife populations can coincide with increasing human populations with proper land management.

Will it happen on a large scale? In reality (as you said) probably not. But again, proper land management is what it takes.

Anyway, RK I figure you'll get a kick out of the optimism coming out of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Their long term wild pheasant harvest outlook is pinned at 1 millions birds a year! What do they know that we don't

[RK Special K]

OldDublin and 1pheas4, I very much appreciate both of your responses. They were both refreshing and interesting.

The following is the best way I know to express my understanding of pheasants:

My Dad grew up on a farm near Standale, MI. There were plenty of pheasants around their farm and in Michigan but in the fall of 1949 both he and my uncle began going to SD(little town of Carpenter just south of Clark) with about 6 other guys. They said Michigan was good but South Dakota........WOW! It was crazy FANTASTIC! They felt like they were there to rid the countryside of these swarms....literally waves upon waves of these corn eating locusts. They were HELPING this farmer out and all the other farmers around! Pay to hunt? Never heard of such a thing! They slept in the farmers basement in sleeping bags and they ate all their meals with the family which, of course, they did pay for. Daily limits were VERY high and those were frequently surpassed they do admit. All the farmers family had licenses so it was "not a problem". The season was shorter than today. I have pictures of them grinning ear-to-ear with their WMD's beside stacks of birds 3 feet high and 12 feet long. After a week, they would return to Michigan after shooting nearly 500 hundred birds. My Dad quit going after 1963 and the group kind of splintered off soon thereafter.

Fast-forward to 2012: Not much at all has changed in South Dakota. Why, I bet if you took a time machine from 1960 to 2012, you might hardly perceive a difference - a few more abandoned, dilapidated farmsteads, a couple fancy motels on the edge of town, Wal-Mart, Cabella's in Mitchell - that's about it - yawn. AND you could still drive for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles..........and see nothing but the horizon in the far, far distance and endless, boring, tedious, gargantuan seas of corn, grass, soybeans, sunflowers, wheat, grass, soybeans, corn, sunflowers, grass, wheat, grass, soybeans, corn, grass, sunflowers, wheat, grass, soybeans, grass - from one side of the horizon to the other.........and, and, and.................
PHEASANTS!!!!!!!............EVERYWHERE!!!!!!!!!

Meanwhile, time has not stood still in Michigan nor been kind to it. It's now a tired, old, worn out rag of a hag. Infected by irreversable, massive viral intrusions and expansions into its fragile pheasant environment by a population 10 times the size of South Dakotas. Something HAD to give!

Here's what I truely believe about pheasants:

They are close to an ALL or NOTHING proposition:

If you have everything pheasants need you will have ALL the pheasants you could possibly handle. We'll call this 100%

If you have 75% of what they need you will only have 25% of the birds.

If you have 50% of what they need you will only have 10% of the birds.

If you have 25% of what they need you will only have 3% of the birds.

I believe Michigan is now at 25% of what pheasants need. That is REALLY sad and sobering. What this means to me is that we would have to TRIPLE our "What they need factor" to obtain 25% of what we want. We have WAY to far to go to get what we DON'T want. I'm depressed already.

Pheasants are practically a praire type bird that has a preference to eat a farm type crop. Michigan is not a praire type of state and to get there I simply don't think it is even close to possible anymore. It amazes me how damn close we got in the 30's, 40's and 50's and we "faked it" real good for that "blink of an eye" period. But we stand naked now, as the true imposter we are, is exposed.

[1pheas4]

Originally Posted by RK Special K

I believe Michigan is now at 25% of what pheasants need. That is REALLY sad and sobering.

Indeed it is. Particularly when considering what the pheasant requires to survive and even thrive. It doesn't take much!!! He tolerates us fairly well in comparison to other game birds within N. America.

We've managed to find a way to screw him over too. Sad and sobering.

[OldDublin]

Originally Posted by RK Special K

OldDublin and 1pheas4, I very much appreciate both of your responses. They were both refreshing and interesting....

I would add accurate, thought-provoking and independent of high-five interest to both as well.

If you were/are trying to incite a discussion based upon the idea that population growth delivers negative effects to gamebird populations, specifically pheasant or Bonasa U, then that would be, as said, a non-starter....I confidently believe folks reading this message board need little convincing along those lines.
Principally because many of us have lived the event.

However, what many here appear interested in is providing a pheasant experience for others(kids and dogs especially) and themselves.....often in areas which have few birds.
Either few remaining for myriad reasons or total absences for additional reasons.
Not everyone had or knew relatives who had, and I would add never should have had, experiences with pheasants resulting in piles of gone-home pheasants high enough to repel blue-painted Picts.
As with the common photos of ruffed grouse overflowing bushel baskets, that was a sign of times which would carry, again stated, too many negatives or was of a time of understandable and important "growth" and one for which folks would have benefitted from a bit of restraint.

A SD pheasant experience is not really needed, imho, by a kid or a dog...they seldom or don't really have the comparative experience to understand and appreciate the difference or, basically, their concept of happy and enough does not fall beyond the moment.
Because of that there is a place for the less than jaw-dropping re pheasants...and that lower level of glut can be provided by a released bird experience, a small population bird experience on the farm of a family friend or even a Preserve.
Any of those three can be provided by a level of pheasants in Michigan or Pennsylvania or wherever.
The real sticker is whether funds are available to support the program, funds use is viewed honestly and apportioned fairly over time, enough folks support the effort and...a good dose of luck is spooned down the throat.
In other additional words, RK...kids likely would not know an "imposter" from Adam's off ox and if a few birds can yield a few good experiences under some applied commonsense, then good.

Also good that you did not apply the % reasoning to the ruffed grouse issue....there are few true comparisons between those species and.......I have a cup of tea again.

[RK Special K]

Hold the tea! Hold the tea!

No, my previous post had nothing to do with ruffed grouse. Their needs have their own peculiarities. Different subject matter.

And don't get to rapped up in my % numbers. Feel free to adjust them as you might feel they should be. They are only meant to be "rough" approximations based upon a certain level of understanding that I have. You may have different takes based upon your understanding.

I am more confident in my pheasant %'s than I am with the table I prepared previously for ruffed grouse. It was "off the cuff" but still reflected a general idea:

To simplify:

No people - 30 birds

20 people - 90 birds

80 people - 20 birds

Where the maximum is 100 for both people and grouse. It trys to reflect a concept of a little bit of human agitation is great - too much is really bad.

I agree, we don't need the god-awful amount of pheasants that SD had in 1949 or perhaps even what Michigan had back then. A good experience pheasant hunting shouldn't have to based on those bird numbers.

I have one more "fun" analogy for Michigan pheasants:

The situation is not like re-arranging the deck chairs on a sinking Titanic. We were there between 1963 and 1970. The situation is like re-arranging the deck chairs with a remote mini-sub, after she's been on the bottom for 42 years, hoping we're going to raise her up and restore her back to full glory!

I am going to take a break from this for awhile and LISTEN to reasons why I might be wrong on all of this..........and I hope like hell that I am! I really do!

[RK Special K]

Just a reminder on a patient in critical condition:

Iowa is where Michigan was in say 1967-68. She's hit an iceberg and taking in water fast. Flares are being shot in the night sky. An SOS is frantically being tapped with morse code. Will her water tight compartments hold and keep her from sinking? She might have a bit more raw material to work with than what Michigan had in our time of crisis but it's close, man is it CLOSE! The western half might be salvagable, especially the NW. And let's not forget SW Minnesota. The eastern half appears to me as too far gone. Crop prices, land values, loss of CRP, people factor - with some luck and effort, a couple of these factors could change for the better in the west. A lot of her landscape mimicks the praire ok - not great but it's adequate.

The California and Carpathia are around, but, of couse, they would only serve to rescue the surviving hunters and carry them to safety in SD, ND, MT, NE, and KS. Let's hope we don't need them! I hate going to funerals.

[FCSpringer]

Good god, LOL. Enough allready. Go enjoy the out doors and be happy. You could move to islamabad and see how that pans out.

[Tireguy]

December hunting is not the problem. Shooting roosters is not going to hurt the population. What we need to do is reduce the predators, coyotes, house cats, possums and etc. If we ever want to see pheasants in Michigan of any quantity we have to deal with the predators. I have driven through the thumb of Michigan after the crops are down and counted 20 plus house cats (and not on porches or in barns). I live in Michigan and see lots of good habitat for birds, but no birds. I also believe that is the problem with our Ruffed Grouse population, even though the birds are cyclical the highs keep getting lower every time.

[mmelton]

we could get rid of a hell of a lot of racoons and coyotes that would help for sure. In the 70s people in michigan could make a living of collecting furs but there just isn't much money in it anymore

[RK Special K]

South Dakota has certainly as many predators as Michigan and probably many, many times MORE per square mile.

It's HABITAT! If you removed every last pheasant predator in Michigan, you would NOT see a significant rise in bird numbers. See my previous posts. There is simply no room at the INN here in Michigan for large numbers of pheasants, with or without predators.

In my book, predators are more than welcome to co-exist and even thrive within the context of good/excellent pheasant habitat. But this may be closer to the truth: Great pheasant habitat promotes large #'s of pheasants and in turn, good pheasant habitat is probably not as good for their predators. Bad pheasant habitat is probably better habitat for predators. That's why you see so many.

The habitat in SD and "out west" is so overwhelmingly in favor of pheasants that you hardly recognize larger predator numbers. The number of birds WAY exceeds the ability of predators to significantly impact them - even at higher predator #'s than in Michigan.

Pheasants will become virtually extinct in Michigan in less than 40 years - well, about like New Jersey, Maryland or Massachusetts. Are there any wild birds in those states?

I don't hunt ruffed grouse on the plains of Nebraska and nor would I ever consider improving the habitat for them in Nebraska. I would hunt them in northern MI, WI, and MN and improve habitat there for them. I don't hunt pheasant in the wooded, broken up farmland of Michigan and nor would I ever consider improving habitat for them in Michigan. It's WAY to far GONE! I hunt them in SD, ND, and MT and pheasant habitat projects there reap HUGE rewards. My gosh, what is all the fuss about - hunt them where they like to live and quit trying to force round pegs into square holes!