Last months storms came at a terrible time for pheasants

[h2ofwlr]

Storms came at horrible time for pheasants
By John Cross, Mankato Free Press staff writer.
Sun Jun 22, 2014, 06:14 AM CDT

For pheasants and pheasant hunters, there were no silver linings to be found in the storm clouds that inundated the countryside with heavy rains this week.

A foot of rain falling in just a week is never good, but for pheasants, it came at precisely the worst time.

Kurt Haroldson, assistant regional wildlife manager at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources office in New Ulm, said the median hatch date for pheasants typically occurs the first week in June.

“It’s a bell-shaped curve with chicks being hatched on both sides of the peak,” he said.

Already so late into the nesting season, many hens probably had hatched broods that would be impacted by extremely heavy rain.

“It’s not looking good,” he said. “Hens will re-nest if their nests are destroyed before their eggs hatch, but once the the chicks have hatched, they won’t.”

With areas of Minnesota’s best pheasant range receiving a foot or more of rain over the last several days, a reasonable assumption is that some chicks have drowned.

But Haroldson said that chick survival also is based on available food sources and temperatures.

“Warm, dry springs are ideal,” he said, adding such conditions result in plentiful bug populations, a key component to pheasant chick survival.

“Cool, wet weather isn’t good for the bugs that pheasant chicks feed on,” he said.

Since pheasant chicks are not able to regulate body temperatures very well, the combination of wet weather and cool temperatures also can adversely impact their survival.

Haroldson said that the only good thing about recent weather events is they have been accompanied by warm temperatures.

Bill Schuna, DNR wildlife manager for Nobles, Rock, Murray and Pipestone counties in extreme southwest Minnesota which traditionally has been prime pheasant range, said the rain couldn’t have come at a worse time.

“Crews out spraying weeds a few weeks ago were reporting seeing broods of pheasants,” he said.

“Some of the places in my four-county work area have received anywhere from 5 to 14 inches of rain. Rains like that are pretty tough on the chicks.”

He said a relatively open winter in his area last year resulted in minimal mortality and good carryover of adult birds. Given a good nesting season, there could have been excellent pheasant recruitment.

However, the deluges that have swept across prime parts of the pheasant range have dimmed those prospects.

Just how the recent weather developments impacted pheasant reproduction won’t really be known until August, when the annual roadside surveys are conducted.

And sometimes even those don’t give a true assessment of actual state of pheasant populations.

Most would agree last year’s roadside survey results that indicated a statewide decline of 29 percent turned out to be the pessimistic side.

Hunters were pleasantly surprised when they discovered better hunting, particularly for very young birds, than the survey results portended in many areas of the state pheasant range.

Wildlife biologists speculated last year’s August numbers were skewed by a late, cold spring that delayed nesting and the subsequent hatch.

As a result, many hens were still incubating their eggs in early August when the roadside surveys are conducted.

Whether that will turn out be the case this year remains to be seen.

“It was a cool, late spring again this year, but not as late and cool as last year,” Schuna said.

“It’s probably going to be a longer walk between flushes this fall,” Haroldson predicted.

[cstemig]

This wet spring did my pheasant chicks no favors. I lost about 20 of them in two days, due to the cold, wet rains and hypothermia. The chicks were about 3-weeks old and had been conditioned with water from a garden sprayer before release into the outside pen. They had worked their oilers, but the chill factor still took them.

I can't imagine what the wild ones went through, but I'll guess that it had a negative impact on their population.