Pheasant Hunting For Beginners - New Colorado Program

Novice Hunter Program goes from classroom to field. Pheasant season is one of the high points on Colorado's sporting calendar. But for new hunters, figuring out how to successfully harvest Colorado roosters can be frustrating. That's the idea behind Colorado Parks and Wildlife's Novice Hunter Program, a mentored hunting curriculum that takes new hunters from the classroom to the fields of eastern Colorado to hunt wild roosters. "Learning to hunt pheasants can be a long process without a mentor to help you," said CPW small game biologist Ed Gorman. "Many of us had family, friends or relatives who took us under their wing. What we're looking to do is provide the same opportunity to novices who may not have that support system." The Novice Hunter Program class starts off with Pheasant Hunting 101, a series of lessons in pheasant biology, habitat, hunting strategies, laws and ethics and more. The classroom moves to the field in the afternoon, where students practice safe pheasant hunting tactics and watch trained dogs work live pheasants planted in the grass. The final station is the trap range, where students learn the fundamentals of shotgun shooting before they step to the line and start breaking clay targets under the eye of certified instructors and range safety officers. "Our Hunter Ed curriculum is great at teaching the basics of how to handle a firearm safely, " said Area Wildlife Manager Mark Leslie, a lead instructor in the novice hunter program. "This program adds a whole new dimension, from pheasant biology to hunting strategies to the importance of working as a team during a successful hunt." For students, their one-day Novice Hunter class is just the beginning of their program. Later on, they can sign up for additional shooting instruction and go on mentored dove hunts with instructors. During pheasant season, CPW leases special Walk-In Access properties just for students' use to give them a place to practice their new skills in an unpressured setting. Finally, students can go on mentored pheasant hunts with experienced CPW staff and volunteers from Pheasants Forever. "The Novice Hunter model is built around the idea of mentors helping students gain the confidence and experience they need to become pheasant hunters," said Theo Stein, the Northeast Region Hunting and Angling Outreach Coordinator. "Pheasants Forever volunteers were instrumental in the success of the program's pilot year in 2013. We could not ask for a better partner." Read the rest of the Journal-Advocate article

With Iowa pheasant numbers down, state hopes to provide cover

By Bennet Goldstein

This year, winter had a greater effect than causing Iowans to plow their driveways or shiver from the biting frostiness.

For pheasants, higher-than-average snowfall in much of Iowa blocked access to much of their habitat, making conditions precarious.

Unlike songbirds, pheasants don't migrate, said Todd Bogenschutz, upland game bird biologist at the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

"They can't get away from these conditions," he said.

The winter cold wasn't so much of a problem as the snow, which gave the birds fewer places to hide and escape predators -- hawks and owls, foxes, dogs, cats, and occasionally, coyotes.

Snow made it necessary for the birds to forage further from their roosting grounds.

"Now they have to go a quarter of a mile to get food," said Bogenschutz. "That just makes them more vulnerable."

Pheasants are highly visible against the snowy white ground compared to the dark landscape after a thaw.

Unfortunately, in northeast Iowa snows as early as November never melted because of cold temperatures, he said.

Less roosting spots also concentrated pheasants together during the night, which increased predation.

It didn't help pheasants that their populations were already vulnerable from a series of harsh winters since 2007, Bogenschutz said.

"It's kind of unprecedented for us to have so many winters consecutively now that the statewide average is 30 or more inches of snow," he said.

Typically, pheasant populations do not increase following winters that exceed 31 inches, Bogenschutz said.

Read the rest of Daily Sentinel article

Pheasants from Montana released into Franklin County, Pennsylvania (includes video)

By Marcus Schneck | mschneck@pennlive.com 

Pheasants from Montana prepared for release in Franklin County, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Game Commission biologists and Cumberland Valley Pheasants Forever volunteers fit wild-trapped Montana pheasants with radio collars and crate them in preparation for release into the Franklin Wild Pheasant Recovery Area.

More than 60 ring-necked pheasants from southeastern Montana were released just before sunrise Sunday onto the landscape near Mercersburg in Franklin County.

The birds – 62 total, plus four wild-caught birds from another area of Pennsylvania – are the first to be released into the Franklin Wild Pheasant Recovery Area.

The Montana birds were trapped from the wild on a Crow reservation, crated and air-freighted into Baltimore-Washington International Airport on Friday, trucked to a farm on Friday night and fitted with radio-tracking collars on Saturday night.

Four Pennsylvania roosters were added to adjust the hen-to-rooster ratio for the release after being trapped from the wild in the Central Susquehanna Wild Pheasant Recovery Area in Columbia, Lycoming, Montour and Northumberland counties.

Central Susquehanna is another of the four WPRAs established by the Pennsylvania Game Commission and Pheasants Forever chapters in an attempt to re-establish wild pheasant populations in Pennsylvania.

Launched in 2007, it's the oldest and most successful to date of the WPRAs.

In addition to Franklin and Central Susquehanna, WPRA's have been established in the Hegins and Gratz valleys in Schuylkill and Dauphin counties, and in Somerset County.

The Franklin site is the last of the WPRAs to receive pheasants. The commission was unable to obtain wild-trapped birds from any of the western states for planned releases in 2012 and 2013.

Read the rest of the Patriot-News article

Missouri Conservation commission expands pheasant season

By Margaret Slayton St. Joseph News-Press |

Change is on the way for Missouri’s upland bird hunters.

The Missouri Conservation Commission approved a regulation proposal this week that expanded the pheasant hunting season statewide and voiced support for a long-term quail research project under way in the southwest portion of the state.

Pheasant hunters can bag the bird in any county of Missouri starting in November 2015, according to MDC Deputy Director Tom Draper.

Under the current regulations that will remain in effect for the 2014 hunting season, hunters are restricted to counties across northern Missouri and to four counties in southeast Missouri. The north hunting zone opens on Nov. 1 and closes Jan. 15 with a daily bag limit of two and a possession limit of four. The southeast region begins on Dec. 1 and ends on Dec. 12 with a daily bag limit of one and a possession limit of one.

Draper said beginning in 2015 the statewide hunting season will match the north zone hunting regulations.

Read the rest of the original article

This Dog's Human Passed Away. What Happened Next is Unbelievable. Video

Why Winter Shooting Requires Ammo Changes

Written by: Tom Roster

“Late season birds are tougher to kill because of their thicker feathers and heavier layers of fat and down.” How many times have you heard that? I’m sorry, but it’s not true. 

As fall wears on into winter, wild waterfowl and upland birds have progressively LESS access to food. This is due principally to snow cover. So fat layers and muscles of wild game birds do not get thicker or heavier as fall hunting seasons transcend into winter. 

  
As far as the birds being “more feathered-out” late in the season, that’s another fallacy. By November 1st they have all the head, neck, body and flight feathers they’re ever going to get. Now, they might have a wee bit more insulating down. But in my necropsies of thousands of waterfowl and pheasants, down has never proven to be a significant pellet penetration inhibitor regardless of thickness. Bottom line: there’s nothing anatomically or physiologically significantly different about wild game birds during late fall and winter which makes them harder to kill. 

What is changing as the season wears on is that average daily temperatures decline. All shotshell ammunition – factory or reloaded – sheds velocity quicker and patterns open more as temperature drops. The atmosphere also becomes denser. The denser the atmosphere, the more resistance confronts the projectiles. The denser the medium a projectile has to pass through, the more quickly it slows down. If the projectile is deformed (as would happen to the vast majority of lead pellets and the pellets in soft, nontoxic shot types such as bismuth and several plastic-tungsten alloy types), it will diverge from the point of aim at an angle ever greater the denser the atmosphere becomes.  

Read the rest of the ShotgunLife article to find our more and how to adjust for colder temperatures.

God Made a Dog - Video

For my dogs

Marge

Fergie

Tina

Tasha

MN 2013 Walk In Access WIA Information and Maps are available

Walk-In Access (WIA) Program

...providing public hunting opportunities on private lands thanks to volunteer landowners.

• New for 2013: Hunters must purchase a WIA Validation to legally hunt WIA Sites this fall. 
  It is a nominal $3, a portion of which covers the license transaction with the remainder to be used for a hunter evaluation next year. The validation will also give DNR and policymakers a way to track the number of hunters whom hunt Walk-In Access sites. Landowners cannot give others permission to hunt without a validation. 

• Walk-In Access sites are open during any legal hunting season from Sept. 1 to May 31. Please respect private property and verify public hunting areas by observing boundary signs.
• Clay County WIA # 55 is within the Clay County Game Refuge and is closed to waterfowl hunting during the regular season. Open to all other hunting.
• Walk-In Access sites (WIA) are only open to hunting where WIA boundaries are posted with WIA signs. Landowners may opt out of the program, and will be reflected in the Online Atlas and the WIA County Interactive Map. Check the "Walk-In Access Site Status Changes" for the latest information on WIA site conditions.
• Only walk-in hunting traffic is allowed on enrolled acres. Land enrolled in the WIA program is not open to trapping, trap shooting, dog training or activities other than hunting. No vehicle traffic is allowed. Parking is along roads or in designated parking areas.
• Hunters must follow the Code of Conduct  developed for WIA lands.
• Emergency Grazing and Haying on WIA sites

Find a WIA Interactive Map Click on a county in the map to bring up detailed maps of WIAs

WIA tools Printable atlas 2013 (11 mb) Code of Conduct English Español Hmong Google Earth file (KML) View WIAs in Google Maps 2013 GPS data DNR Recreaton Compass WIA program evaluation ALL WIA sites are now OPEN to Public Hunting. Printed Atlas Updates

WIA maps & data

All map data and map products (including Google Earth, Google Map, and GPS files) are general and do not accurately represent the actual legal or established boundary of these areas, and thus should be used for reference only. Please respect private property and verify public hunting areas by observing boundary signs.

Check the MN DNR website for updates

Minnesota’s 2013 pheasant index down 29 percent from 2012

A long winter followed by a cold, wet spring contributed to a significant decrease in Minnesota’s pheasant count, which declined 29 percent from 2012, according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

“Minnesota’s results reflect what we’re seeing in other states,” said Rachel Curtis, DNR wildlife research biologist. “South Dakota had a 64 percent decrease in its brood survey. North Dakota’s most-recent rooster crowing count is down 11 percent from last year. And Iowa reported a 19 percent decrease in its August roadside count.”

Minnesota’s 2013 pheasant index is 64 percent below the ten-year average and 72 percent below the long-term average.

Pheasant hunters still are expected to harvest about 246,000 roosters this fall. That’s down 44,000 from last year’s estimate and is less than half the number of pheasants taken during the 2005-2008 seasons when hunting was exceptionally good.

The highest pheasant counts were in the southwest region, where observers reported 51 birds per 100 miles of survey driven. Hunters should find good harvest opportunities in west-central, east-central and south-central Minnesota.

“Pheasant populations respond to habitat abundance and changes in weather,” Curtis said. “The steady downward trend in Minnesota’s pheasant population during the past several years is primarily due to habitat loss. Weather has caused minor fluctuations.”

The most important habitat for pheasants is grassland that remains undisturbed during the nesting season. Protected grasslands account for about 6 percent of the state’s pheasant range. Farmland retirement programs such as Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, Reinvest in Minnesota and Wetlands Reserve Program make up the largest portion of protected grasslands in the state.

High land rental rates and competing uses for farmland diminish the economic attractiveness of farmland conservation programs. CRP enrollment declined by 63,700 acres in Minnesota’s pheasant range over the last year and contracts for nearly 400,000 acres of statewide CRP lands are scheduled to expire during the next 3 years. If not re-enrolled, this would reduce CRP acres in Minnesota by 30 percent.

To help offset continued habitat losses caused by reductions in conservation set-aside acreage, the DNR has accelerated acquisition of wildlife management areas in the farmland region of Minnesota. The U.S Fish and Wildlife Service also acquires and protects habitat across the state. In addition, the DNR supports habitat conservation on private lands by working with a variety of partners in the Farm Bill Assistance Partnership and Working Lands Initiative.

High spring precipitation and below average temperatures hurt nesting this year. This year’s average hatch date was delayed to June 20, which is 11 days later than the 10-year average of June 9.

Although fewer broods were seen, brood size was larger than last year and comparable to the long-term average. Actual reproduction rates may be higher than the survey suggests. Hens that were successful nesting later in the season tend to be underrepresented in roadside data and it is possible that hens were still nesting or in heavier cover with young chicks during the survey period. 

The pheasant population estimate is part of the DNR’s annual August roadside wildlife survey, which began in 1955. DNR conservation officers and wildlife managers in the farmland region of Minnesota conduct the survey during the first half of August. This year’s survey consisted of 171 routes, each 25 miles long, with 152 routes located in the ring-necked pheasant range.

Observers drive each route in early morning and record the number and species of wildlife they see. The data provide an index of relative abundance and are used to monitor annual changes and long-term population trends of pheasants, gray (Hungarian) partridge, cottontail rabbits, white-tailed jackrabbits, mourning doves and other wildlife. 

The gray partridge index also decreased from last year and remained below the 10-year average. The cottontail rabbit index increased from last year but stayed below the 10-year and long-term average. The jackrabbit index was 87 percent below the long-term average. Finally, the mourning dove index was 20 percent below last year and lower than the 10-year and long-term averages.

Original MN DNR article