Exploring the mystery upswing in pheasant harvest as opening day comes Saturday

Reading the Pheasant Status Report 2019, I breezed through, “During the 2018-19 pheasant season, an estimated 11,692 hunters (down 7.0%) harvested 68,112 wild pheasant (up 101%).”

Whoa. For decades, I’ve followed a steady decline. A harvest increase of 101 percent is not a blip, it’s a major change.

Wade Louis, Habitat Team Program manager in his second year as acting Agricultural and Grassland Wildlife Program manager, noticed and double checked with Craig Miller, human dimensions scientist for the Illinois Natural History Survey. Miller said the data was right.

“I am hoping that is a product of the pollinator and CP33 [habitat buffers] programs,” Louis said. “Hopefully, they are trending up. We have had a couple years of good winters.”

Dale Bowman

The trend on call counts and pheasant populations has been up in recent years.

Upland game hunting (pheasant cockbirds, rabbits, quail) opens Saturday in Illinois.

I wondered about the impact of a cold wet spring on pheasant nesting.

“It did concern me a little bit, but they will renest up to three nests,” Louis said. “Early birds that hatched, they got cold and wet. That is more of a death sentence than anything. That’s happened to those early birds. It did get better in late May, June and July. We had hatches in early August. We have seen quite a few broods younger than normal. It will be interesting to see what this season holds for us.”

He is not overly concerned about the slow crop harvest.

“Eventually it will be harvested,” Louis said. “The first couple weeks may be impacted.”

Observers recorded 0.52 pheasants per stop in the breeding survey, up 48.5 percent from 2018.

Dale Bowman

Louis noted that quail are a species of concern in Illinois and on the national level.

“Quail are high maintenance,” Louis said. “It doesn’t take much to have a pheasant. Quail need brood, nesting and escape cover all within a stone’s throw. But are they doomed? I don’t think so.”

Illinois is managing for quail at the reclaimed mine site, Burning Star State Fish and Wildlife Area in Jackson County. Southern Illinois will be establishing baseline data on quail there.

According to the Quail Status Report 2019, an estimated 5,753 hunters (down 33 percent) harvested 28,395 wild quail (up 3.5 percent) in ‘18-19. Quail hunters averaged 0.92 quail per day (up 26 percent). Quail counts were down from 2018.

Harvest of rabbits was down 52 percent at 86,671 with rabbit hunters down 25 percent to 21,714 in ‘18-19.

My favorite piece of data, road-kill index for rabbits, comes last. In the June and July count, road-killed rabbits were up 11 percent from 2018 (2.29 per 1,000 miles).

ILLINOIS HUNTING: Through Sunday, Illinois bowhunters harvested 18,166 deer, up from 17,540 in 2018. . . . Biologist Bob Massey messaged a reminder for deer hunters in CWD counties, ``We have drop barrels at most of our state parks and many processors and taxidermists are taking samples as well.’’ . . . At Heidecke Lake, 27 boats took 75 ducks over the weekend; at William Powers SRA, 11 ducks and one goose were bagged.

WILD THINGS: Fallen hedge apples clutter fencerows and back roads. Crushed fallen walnuts blacken rural roadways. On Monday, Jim Hantak emailed from Hillside, “Between yesterday and today, I’ve seen multiple juncos in multiple places, winter is coming.”

STRAY CAST: David Ross is that smallmouth bass that follows the hooked one to the boat.