Family-Outdoors

Fruits of the hunt! (Photo credit: Wikipedia) More hunting opportunities meant more pheasants taken during the 2011 season, as last fall’s pheasant harvest was 683,000, up from 552,000 in 2010. Aaron Robinson, upland bird biologist for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, said the overall landscape probably didn’t have more birds, but Mother Nature allowed for an increase in harvest due to mild weather conditions and minimal snow cover in November, December and early January. “This is a prime example of how the harvest doesn’t necessarily reflect the overall population,” Robinson said. “We actually had lower production in 2011 than in 2010, but hunter effort made up the difference due to last winter’s exceptionally mild weather conditions.” Statistics actually revealed the number of hunters declined 10 percent to 82,700. The number of resident hunters was down 5 percent to 58,200, while nonresident pheasant hunter numbers decreased 20 percent to 24...

The Common Pheasant(Photo credit: Wikipedia) North Dakota’s spring pheasant crowing count survey revealed a 10 percent increase statewide compared to last year. All four pheasant districts showed an increase compared to last year. The number of crows heard in the southeast increased by 12 percent, northwest by 8 percent, northeast by 6 percent and southwest by 4 percent. Stan Kohn, upland game management supervisor for the State Game and Fish Department, said birds did not experience excessive mortality last winter. “Even with the nice winter last year, I anticipated fewer adult birds to be available this spring because poor production in spring of 2009-11 led to fewer young birds entering the fall population,” Kohn said. “However, I did expect to see higher crow count numbers in the southwest because good numbers of birds were observed last winter, but it didn’t pan out in the crow count numbers.” Even with a somewhat smaller breeding class of birds, Kohn sa...