Pheasant Season Forecast – Minnesota

Anyone have any reports to share on pheasant numbers in Minnesota?

I have an uncle farming in the Marshall area and he has been seeing good brood survival numbers and it is quite obvious that nesting was successful in his area. Overall, numbers are still nowhere near what the were during the top-producing years of 5-10 years ago, but there has been some modest rebounding.

A reduction in CRP acres is still the #1 factor, although I have noticed starting last year that some CRP that was ploughed up during the crop price boom period is now back in CRP now that corn and soybean prices have fallen back to earth. I know of two farms that quite obviously took it in the shorts when they ploughed up marginal ground that was in CRP and then they re-discovered exactly why it was in CRP. Hopefully there is a trend back to CRP.

I also noticed that MN’s walk in program is grown and is now over 20k acres. A drop in the bucket is one way to look at it, but that’s up from zero 5 years ago, so hopefully this could be a 100k acre hunting opportunity someday if the program keeps moving forward and adding acres. We had to start somewhere on this and land access is the lifeblood of hunting now that such a large % of the population no longer lives on farms or has access to private farmland.

Lastly, my uncle sadly reports that there are still no partridge (Hungarian) anywhere near his land. He hasn’t see Huns for 5 years now. This is so sad to me, we have talked about trying to plant birds, but I fear the main problem is the trend to just farm corn and beans with no small grain whatsoever. I can’t tell you the last time I saw a wheat field in the Marshall area, it’s been many, many years.

Grouse

South Dakota just released their numbers and they are saying down 20% if i remember right. my guess is Minnesota will be in that range but who knows. most of south Dakota has been in a moderate drought. one would think that would have been favorable to the hatch

Certainly no drought here in MN. We had an opposite scenario with deluge after deluge of rain. Hopefully the chicks survived or hens renested.
I haven’t seen many birds but I’m not in a high bird numbers area so no surprise. Lots of turkeys…
We had such an easy winter I was really hoping for a big comeback year but I’m nervous.

Grouse, I wish we could get some huns to return. They are sure fun to hunt but I haven’t flushed one in close to 20 years.

I saw a lot of pheasants last year on public lands in southwest MN. I just checked the notes I kept and I hunted 13 days and saw 217 or more. To be clear I just mean saw, like if I step in a field and 5 fly out the other end I count 5. I bring this up just to point out that there are pheasants out there on public lands like WMAs, WIAs, and WPAs in MN. It’s certainly not a nice leisurely stroll in many of them but if you don’t mind wet boots and pushing through the thick s**t you’ll find them.

I don’t think we’ll ever see bird numbers like we had in the 60’s / 70’s again. Ma and I had to go to the sister-in-law’s farm west of Albert Lea early this week and I took roads mainly non-interstate just so I could look for pheasants along the way. 83 miles one way, one pheasant – but it was a rooster.

I always loved bumping into a flock of hunkies. Table-wise they beat the feathers off pheasant. Oddly enough I did see one of them laying dead along one stretch of county road on our little tour but I’d much rather have seen a covey of them. Its been a long, long time since I have seen any.

Its odd how all these green people and animal rights groups froth at the mouth over a species of dog that is detrimental to other wildlife yet they say nothing about the near extinction of a game bird. Maybe the Hungarian Partridge should have been born with massive teeth and preyed on sheep? Then we’d hav’em. lol

Tom Sawvell wrote:

I don’t think we’ll ever see bird numbers like we had in the 60’s / 70’s again. Ma and I had to go to the sister-in-law’s farm west of Albert Lea early this week and I took roads mainly non-interstate just so I could look for pheasants along the way. 83 miles one way, one pheasant – but it was a rooster.

I always loved bumping into a flock of hunkies. Table-wise they beat the feathers off pheasant. Oddly enough I did see one of them laying dead along one stretch of county road on our little tour but I’d much rather have seen a covey of them. Its been a long, long time since I have seen any.

Its odd how all these green people and animal rights groups froth at the mouth over a species of dog that is detrimental to other wildlife yet they say nothing about the near extinction of a game bird. Maybe the Hungarian Partridge should have been born with massive teeth and preyed on sheep? Then we’d hav’em. lol

100% agree. I will add that we won’t see pheasants like the past unless we change our habitat. Need more grass and sloughs which we all know we will never see again.

Huns…I used to go up to Saskatchewan and man o’ man are they thick up there! Miles upon miles of wheat fields (that’s why they have such a massive waterfowl flight…) and we’d hit abandon farm houses and every farm house had at least one covey of “Canadian gold”. If you ever have the chance it is incredible hunting up there and rarely do you see another upland hunter…RR

I’ve seen more pheasants in SW MN this year than I’ve seen in quite some time lots of young birds around.

Ducky

Iowa just released their roadside counts and they are down too.

My BIL in Montevideo said he’s been seeing quite a few birds this year.

roosterrouster wrote:

I will add that we won’t see pheasants like the past unless we change our habitat. Need more grass and sloughs which we all know we will never see again.

Habitat is key for upland birds. Land practice changes are probably the single biggest killer for all wildlife.

Better news for MN.

The 2016 range-wide pheasant index (52.1 birds/100 mi) increased 29% from 2015…