Anderson: Pheasant chicks drowned in Minnesota floods, but hope still springs for this year’s hunt

Department of Natural Resources roadside counts for August 1980 reported about 105 pheasants spotted per 100 miles driven on long-established southern Minnesota routes. The next year the number jumped to almost 134.

Compared to the five previous years, those were good tallies for Minnesota pheasants. In 1975, only 35 pheasants were counted per 100 miles. In 1976, the number was 45 and in 1977-1979, the counts were 85, 79 and 54, respectively.

Inclement weather was the difference for pheasants between the two periods. Winters were too severe in the years leading up to 1980, killing some birds. And springs and early summers were too wet, flooding some pheasant nests or drowning hatched chicks.

Yet it was in 1980 and 1981— two years that boasted the best Minnesota pheasant roadside counts since 1964 — that I began to think about founding a wildlife group that took root in 1982 as Pheasants Forever (PF). Today, with its partner organization Quail Forever, PF has 168,000 members nationwide (25,000 in Minnesota) and 630 employees.

In 1980, I was writing this column for the Pioneer Press in St. Paul, and when I proposed starting a pheasant outfit, naming it Pheasants Forever, some readers sent envelopes stuffed with cash. Others said they’d volunteer their time or expertise. Minnesota’s pheasant hunting heyday was in 1958. But many readers recalled fondly the sight of florid roosters flushing into cobalt skies, and wanted to relive those experiences again — and again.

Still, none of us involved with getting PF off the ground — and the group, ultimately, was large — believed our efforts would result in better hunting in the near term. Too many variables, including federal farm programs, winter snows and summer rains affect ringneck populations year to year.

The goal instead was twofold: To stem the continuing loss of upland habitat by developing nesting cover, food plots and shelter belts, primarily on public lands. And to expand the number and size of public lands.

With the additional habitat, we believed a core population of birds could be sustained when bad weather prevailed. In better weather, pheasants could use the new cover to springboard their numbers.

This year, Minnesota hen pheasants will need the added habitat to carry them through to the 2026 breeding season because recent heavy rains inundated much of the state’s ringneck range, and the fear is many newborn chicks were washed away.

“I was talking to a couple of guys in their 80s and they had never seen any rain like we had,” said retired Kandiyohi County administrator Larry Kleindl, 64, who lives near Willmar. “I know I’ve never seen rain like it.”

Timing of the showers was especially unfortunate. If the storms had come earlier, washing out nests before pheasant chicks hatched, most hens would have renested. If the rains had come at the end of June, pheasant chicks might have been big enough to regulate their body temperatures and fly short distances to escape washouts.

But because the region’s heaviest rains fell in mid-June, most chicks likely would have hatched, with perhaps many dying. Once chicks hatch, hens won’t renest.

“We expect the bulk of our hatching in the first, second and third week of June,” said Nicole Davros, Department of Natural Resources farmland wildlife populations and research group leader, stationed in Madelia. “The southwest part of the state hasn’t been too wet, and parts of the south-central haven’t seen the heaviest rains. But in the west-central and west toward Big Stone County, many of the little chicks probably got flooded away.”

Particularly hard hit with rain were Willmar and the country surrounding that Kandiyohi County town of 21,000. The small village of Raymond, about 13 miles southwest of Willmar, was awash in about 8 inches of rain on or about June 13, helping to boost that community’s yearly total to 21 inches, 6 more than average for this time of year.

“I was optimistic for pheasants this year, because for the second straight winter we had mild weather, and the early nesting season started out good,” said Cory Netland, DNR area wildlife supervisor in New London. “I saw my first pheasant chicks on May 22, in Meeker County, which is early.”

Most Minnesotans are unaware that 76,000 acres of upland and wetland habitat in southern Minnesota have been permanently protected by Pheasants Forever, or that thousands of additional acres have been acquired and improved by other groups, including Ducks Unlimited, The Trust for Public Land and The Nature Conservancy,

The DNR and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also deserve credit for the additions.

These acres helped fuel pheasant population increases during years of temperate weather. A mild winter and dry spring in 2004, for example, combined with available habitat to produce a roadside count in 2005 that was 75% higher than in 2004. For the same reasons, the 2012 pheasant roadside count jumped 68% from 2011.

This year’s expected lower roadside pheasant counts likely will mean fewer ringneck hunters will go afield this fall. That’s because upland hunters, like deer hunters or for that matter golfers or pickleball players, can be divided into two camps: casual and committed.

Committed pheasant hunters often incorporate the pastime into their lifestyles, meaning in the offseason they train their dogs, shoot clay targets and volunteer with conservation groups. Casual pheasant hunters by contrast often consider the pastime as one recreation option among many, and frequently sit out hunting seasons if harvest prospects are dim.

Which is fine. Many of these folks nevertheless buy licenses and attend conservation fundraisers, where they contribute money to build more habitat.

And yet ... by focusing too much on their chances to kill birds, they miss out on some of pheasant hunting’s most indelible moments.

Moments that in many ways were the reason Pheasants Forever was started.

Such as resting contentedly on a pickup tailgate at day’s end.

Watching tired dogs curl at your feet.

And bathing in the glow of a western sky bruised orange, red and yellow by the disappearing sun.

Are birds in the bag part of this scene?

Sometimes. But sometimes not.

That’s often forgotten.