Week Off for Pheasant

2011 Pheasant Opener Mulberry Grove Family Farm

I took a week off last week for the Iowa pheasant season opener.  It was a good time to see old friends that live in different states around the country and meet some new ones.  This year's Iowa pheasant crop was expected to be very low and it was.  The pheasants were concentrated in a very specific area in the county and a very concentrated band across the state going from NW Iowa down through central IA in a very narrow band.  Pheasant are an indicator species.  While they're not native to Iowa, they, along with animals like the jackrabbit, are an indicator of not only weather, but also farming practices.  As Iowa has moved to larger tracts of monoculture cropping in much of the state, where fence lines and farmsteads are removed, the animal population that relies on cover for winter survival declines.  We have also had several consecutive years of heavy snowfall and spring rain which is not conducive to newborn survival, especially ground birds like pheasant, quail, turkeys etc.  The combination of bad weather and lack of cover combined into a one-two punch to knock pheasant and jackrabbit populations out across the state.  We're lucky in NW Iowa to have a lot of cover thanks to federal and state wildfowl production areas around the lakes and other watersheds which helps our area to maintain wild animal populations even when the weather is bad.  I'm also personally lucky that my neighbors have committed to many CRP acres as well as maintaining farming practices that utilize terraces and grass waterways which create field borders where animals can take refuge and prosper.  With our current farming practices at Mulberry Grove Family Farm, we have lots of cover from our rotational grazing, field edges through our many crops, as well as enough weed seeds (sorry neighbors) and and waste grain seeds to maintain a very good population throughout the winter.  We have a very nice pheasant population this year - much better than I thought we would.  So when you see pheasant on the roadside late this winter picking up grit from the snow covered roads, look around and chances are that the cover they live in is very close by.  And chances are, there's a farmer that should be given the credit for leaving a little bit for conservation.