3rd straight record low pheasant harvest

The smallest contingent of Iowa pheasant hunters in modern history achieved the state's third straight record low harvest during the past season, according to the Department of Natural Resources.

With the state's pheasant population remaining in free fall, primarily because of too much snow in the winter and too much rain during the nesting season, a fourth straight record low harvest is likely in the offing.

Results from the 2010-11 survey of small game hunters determined an estimated 60,000 hunters harvested 238,000 pheasants in Iowa. That's down from the 2009-10 season, when an estimated 74,000 Iowa pheasant hunters shot an estimated 271,126 roosters.

During the preceding season, 86,000 hunters bagged 383,000 roosters, according to the DNR.

Just to put those three straight record lows in perspective, Iowa hunters harvested an average of 1.5 million birds per year in the 1960s and 1970s.

The five year trend of above average snowfall and cool, wet springs, combined with shrinking habitat, continues to take its toll on Iowa pheasants and quail, said Todd Bogenschutz, the DNR's upland wildlife biologist.

Bogenschutz said he thinks this year's August roadside count - an accurate predictor of the fall harvest - will decline about 10 percent from the previous year's record low statewide average of 11 pheasants per 30-mile route.

Iowa's statewide average of 37.8 inches of snow during the past winter exceeded normal snowfall by more than 10 inches.

“In 50 years of surveys, the roadside counts have never increased following a winter with more than 31 inches of snow. It does not matter what the spring weather is,” Bogenschutz said.

Though hunter participation continued to decline, effort expended by those persisting did not. Bogenschutz said hunters spent an average of nearly seven days hunting pheasants and averaged harvesting four birds.

Hunter success, he said, was highest through the first two weekends of the season, which was also the peak of participation, but hunters who went out later in the year had little competition for places and birds to hunt.

The number of nonresidents hunting pheasants in Iowa declined from about 13,000 during the 2009-10 season to about 9,000 last year, he said.

While the collapse of the state's pheasant population is attributable to both shrinking habitat and unfavorable winter and spring weather, Bogenschutz said Iowa has enough suitable pheasant habitat to support an annual harvest of about 900,000 roosters if the weather would only cooperate.