NEWS

Pheasant population back on rise in Iowa

Josh O'Leary
joleary@press-citizen.com

When hunters take to the fields in Johnson County and across Iowa this month, they may hear more pheasants crowing than in recent years, but still far fewer than they did back in the bird's heyday.

Ring-neck pheasants, Iowa's most abundant upland game bird, are back on the rise in Iowa after seeing their populations decimated by a stretch of harsh winters and dwindling acres set aside for conservation, according to a new wildlife survey by the state's Department of Natural Resources.

With the opening day for rooster pheasant and bobwhite quail hunting seasons Oct. 31, roadside counts conducted by the DNR in August found a significant increase in both populations in Iowa, which is welcome news to hunters and conservationists who have watched the counts nosedive over the past decade.

The survey found a 37 percent increase in Iowa's ring-necked pheasants compared with 2014, marking the highest count since 2007 and the second-straight year of growth.

Still, the state's pheasant population remains just a fraction of what it was in past decades, DNR experts say.

"I hope it's not a false rebound," said Tim Thompson, a DNR wildlife biologist based out of Iowa City. "We have to keep the habitat up, because we lose more of it each year."

According to the DNR, Iowa pheasant hunters are expected to harvest between 300,000 and 500,000 rooster pheasants this year, which would mark a significant uptick from the nearly 200,000 bagged last year. Until the mid-2000s, Iowa had regularly seen more than a million pheasants harvested a year, after peaking at nearly 2 million at times in the 1960s and 1970s.

"It's in the right direction, but not to what is thought of as Iowa standards historically," said Todd Bogenschutz, a DNR upland wildlife research biologist who helps conduct the annual roadside survey. "We've had bad weather and lost habitat, which has really hammered the population."

A spate of several winters with high snowfall totals from 2007 to 2011 — an unprecedented five-year period that saw 30-plus inches of snow annually across Iowa — played a large role in the decline. This past winter, however, a lower-than-normal snowfall allowed for more hens to survive through spring and helped offset a wetter than average hatching season, according to the report.

Thompson said Johnson County got more snow than other parts of the state this year, meaning the uptick in bird numbers might not be as pronounced locally at popular hunting spots like the Hawkeye Wildlife Area outside of North Liberty.

Iowa has also seen a dramatic reduction in wildlife habitat over the past 25 years, according to the report. In 1990, for instance, Iowa had 4.6 million acres of habitat, including 2.7 million acres of hay and grain fields, and 1.9 million acres of Conservation Reserve Program land. In 2013, the most recent year of data collected from USDA, that had fallen to 2.8 million acres of habitat, including 1.3 million acres of hay and grain and 1.5 million acres of CRP land.

Thompson said the CRP drop can be partly attributed to the high corn and bean prices in recent years, resulting in more landowners farming or renting out land once set aside for conservation.

Along with pheasants, the bobwhite quail population is also on a positive trajectory in Iowa, with the DNR counting 52 percent more of the birds this year compared to last. Quail can be found in Johnson County, but are most plentiful in Iowa's southern tier of counties, including Washington County.

As for deer — early archery season for deer started Oct. 1 and early muzzleloader begins Oct. 17 — Thompson said numbers are at "a happy medium."

"The population is about right where we'd like to have it, in terms of there being plenty of deer for hunters and not so many deer that farmers and people in the landscaping business get upset," Thompson said.

Reach Josh O'Leary at joleary@press-citizen.com or 887-5415, and follow him on Twitter at @JD_OLeary.

Iowa Hunting season, upcoming dates

Rooster pheasant: Oct. 31 to Jan. 10.

Bobwhite quail: Oct. 31 to Jan. 31.

Archery deer: Oct. 1 to Dec. 4, and Dec. 21 to Jan. 10.

Muzzleloader deer: Early season Oct. 17 to 25, and late season Dec. 21 to Jan. 10.