It's amazing there's any pheasant to hunt at all in Iowa. 23 thousand acres is really just a drop in the bucket! But I suppose it's better than nothing in a state that's 98% privately owned.
We ask to have the Iowa Dnr release birds and they refuse , us hunters pay the bills give us what we ask , you can have all the habitat but that won’t produce the the birds put them there and let umm grow in numbers !
They keep advertising for Pheasants forever . They are using donations to make private hunting lodges where they charge $1000 a day to hunt the habitat your money created. The land is POSTED that you spent your money on.
It’s sad to think but Iowa will never get close to the bird numbers it once had. I’ve seen first hand how many fields had been taken out since my dad started hunting our farmers private land in Eastern Iowa in the late 90s. It’s a simple concept, No land= No birds and unless the field is impossible to farm or the farmers get equal pay for CRP acres they’re just going to pull everything out
We had the same issue in our area in NE. A few rough summers with drought combined with farming from ditch-to-ditch left our numbers really low. The weather has been decent for the past few years, and that helps numbers, but it will never be the same as it was 30 years ago.
I hunted on some IHAP land in Iowa last fall and the cover was amazing! There was times when it was shoulder high and we did flush birds! I hope the IHAP Program takes off in Iowa!
bird counts were lowest in the southwest corner i thought, seemed like you guys had some birds moving around. especially in those bigs fields if there’s not super high #s
