North Dakota Outdoors: King Roosters

This years pheasant season opened with rain in the east, snow in the west and cold across the state, dedicated hunters found birds despite the elements. It\'s hard to argue with the popularity of pheasants, in this election year in terms of running for office the ring neck is king only takes a back seat to deer hunters in terms of votes via number of hunters, but realistically the popularity of pheasants running season through January simply takes a 16 1/2 day break during the regular deer gun season (and if you haven\'t checked for your tag, do so right now, and if you haven\'t marked the opening day of November , you\'re welcome) and picks right back up when the tag is filled or the season closes.

But let\'s take a look back a short 20 years ago when pheasant numbers were not quite as strong as current populations. And reality of hunter and human behavior is a stronger game population equates into more hunting opportunity and we\'ll tend to see license sales increase accordingly. This doesn\'t however hold true for bullheads in case your wondering. But in 1988 North Dakota pheasant hunters were around 40,000 and they bagged about 120,000 birds for the year and at the time it was a two bird daily limit which figures to about three birds per hunter in a given year.

Let\'s take a quick glance over our shoulder to last year as we take the fields this year and you\'ll remember over 800,000 roosters were bagged by 120,000 hunters, which in essence is more hunters killing even more birds. More recently our spring crowing counts were up over 30% from last year which was offset by a brood count down over 30%. Hunters may wonder why the discrepancy? For starters we had across the state a pretty decent winter which allowed a strong pre-hatch pheasant population moving into the May nesting and June peek hatch period. But a series of events may have contributed to a fall pre-hunt pheasant population closer to 2005 than 2007, which by most peoples recollection and accounts was pretty good, pretty good indeed. We\'ve repeated the changing landscape of North Dakota and it\'s truly occurring. We\'ve seen a half-million acres of CRP no longer creating strong nesting habitat and the reduction in habitat along with a stretch of cool wet weather which can contribute to increased chick mortality. Regardless of the key factor the results was a fall brood index down from last year, but still pretty good compared to 1988 for any arguments sake.

But there\'s other changes you\'ll see as you you chase roosters for the first time in years or even since last year. With the loss of CRP acres the foundation of our Private Land Open to Sportsmen or PLOTS acres has also been subject to these changing times. While PLOTS continue to provide over 1 million acres of public hunting access with 500,000 of those acres enrolled in CRP some PLOTS acres have been taken out and others are in the process of being withdrawn and converted and while the August printing of the PLOTS guide is still a valuable commodity, they reality is some hunters when visitng a PLOTS tract from last year and still marked with signs on the ground and coded as such in the book, those CRP acres may be corn, stubble or dug as part of the changing landscape. Understand Game and Fish is committed to providing quality hunting access in if ever there\'s a question about a particular PLOTS tract or land use practice, give the Department area private lands biologist a call and they\'ll be able to access the current state of the tract.

To many hunters the past decade PLOTS has been a welcome addition to mix in within existing landowner and sportsmen relationships. The intent of PLOTS was never to be the only source of hunting lands, but to provide a backup or fill in the cracks for some hunters. No doubt PLOTS will continue to evolve, and the Department will continue to make this a priority.

Leier is a biologist for the Game and Fish Department. He can be reached by email: dleier@nd.gov