Game & Fish Numbers

[savage270]

Can anyone explain this to me? I do not have any experience with wildlife biology and am not bashing the G&F department, but I do work with numbers and things just don't add up for me.

Antelope - the G&F tells us that the population was down 14% from last year, but reduced tags by 44% from the prior year.

Pheasants - the G&F tells us that numbers are down 61%, but the limit remains at 3 per day.

I understand that big game and birds are two different things, but I am just having a hard time wrapping my head around how they manage the resources.

[Rowdie]

Well with pheasants, limits on roosters really doesn't matter. Its all about surviving the winter. One rooster will fertilize as many hens as he can. You could shut the season down and with a winter like last year and a dry period during the hatch and it wouldn't matter. It's the hen survival that determines the numbers, oh and the hatch of course.

[MarbleEyez]

Keep in mind that a large percentage of the rooster population get's harvested each year. I believe it is somewhere around 65-75%. One of the wildlife associations released those figures, I can remember which one it was.

[Rowdie]

It's actually a good thing to thin out the roosters. They are more dominate and will hog the food from the hens in the tough times in winter.

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I think the goats too, you could shoot a buck or two out of every herd and every doe would still get bred. Now if they start issuing doe tags, that's where you'll start to control population. And again, habitat and winters determine the population. You could have shot every goat in the county you could find before the winter of 97, the same number would have been around the next year....0.

[ndlongshot]

Pronghorn, 1 child/year
Pheasant, 10-14 children/year

Females drive populations.

[db-2]

Well that speaks volumes about doe tags (and the desire for limiting doe tags be it one child or 14) along with buck tags (issuing more). db

[RustyTackleBox]

also a pheasant is old at 3 years of age and a deer can be 8-10 or even older in rare cases... the pheasant population is not naturally sustainable also, if we did not stock pheasants then they would eventually all die off

[PrairieGhost]

I agree with everyone so far, but would add one thing for the antelope. To maintain a population that can maintain itself numbers can only go so low. This may cause a disproportionate number of tags as related to drop in population. For example if you have a species that requires about 5000 to maintain a presence and if they fall to 4000 the fall would continue until you had none. So if you have 7000 you could have 2000 permits. If you have 6000 you could only have 1000 permits. So even though the population only dropped 14 percent the tags dropped 50 percent.

[Kurtr]

also a pheasant is old at 3 years of age and a deer can be 8-10 or even older in rare cases... the pheasant population is not naturally sustainable also, if we did not stock pheasants then they would eventually all die off

really i thought they started there own population when they escaped and were hardy enough to populate on their own. Does the gfp stock pheasants up there we dont down here.

[Captain Ahab]

also a pheasant is old at 3 years of age and a deer can be 8-10 or even older in rare cases... the pheasant population is not naturally sustainable also, if we did not stock pheasants then they would eventually all die off

[8andcounting]

Pronghorn, 1 child/year
Pheasant, 10-14 children/year

Females drive populations.

yet the gf still sells tons of deer doe tags in units that have low number of deer

[db-2]

Just to say the pheasant was brought here as I understand it and the deer were here from the beginning.

ND is not a normal place for the pheasant to survive but they do. My son release a bunch this year and hopes to release at least a 1000 next year. So they do have a lot of help from many at surviving.

I would like to also assume that us hunters and the harvest of the wildlife is not the main or final reason for the killing off of a animal up here. We have done enough of that in the past.

Hopefully we are the ones helping them maintain their place up here for the future and that means game and fish needs to make sound decisions.

Not sure if more pheasant are kill by us or by nature but I would assume nature. We just need to make sure with what is left we do not put a end to them if they are worth having.

So I am not inform enough to say the limit should of been changed. Hopefully with all their book learning and someplace some common sense they are making the right decision. db

[Big Iron]

really i thought they started there own population when they escaped and were hardy enough to populate on their own. Does the gfp stock pheasants up there we dont down here.

Whatever KurtR

[PrairieGhost]

yet the gf still sells tons of deer doe tags in units that have low number of deer

They are getting political pressure to keep the numbers down. Some people didn't like those high numbers we had in the past.

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really i thought they started there own population when they escaped and were hardy enough to populate on their own. Does the gfp stock pheasants up there we dont down here.

I think without help the natural range would be established about 100 to 200 miles south of you Kurtr.

[Kurtr]

Whatever KurtR

really you got me there dawg

They are getting political pressure to keep the numbers down. Some people didn't like those high numbers we had in the past.

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I think without help the natural range would be established about 100 to 200 miles south of you Kurtr.

you do. So when Gst has said that they release pheasants he is told it really does not matter as the pen raised ones wont make it. Show where south dakota is stocking any pheasants where the gfp is placing pen raised birds to supplement the population of pheasants. Prove me wrong and show how the population is supplemented here are the past stats from 1919....

pheasant-stats.pdf

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PHEASANT INTRODUCTIONS AND DISTRIBUTIONRecords of initial pheasant introductions in South Dakota from the late 1800s and early1900s are too vague or incomplete to provide accurate numbers, origin or exactlocations of releases. According to Trautman (1982), Dr. A. Zetlitz of Sioux Falls hadseveral varieties shipped to South Dakota in 1891. These pheasants consisted ofringnecks (assumed to be of the English ringneck variety) and a few of the golden andsilver varieties. These birds, along with others hatched and reared at his home, werereleased at the junction of the Split Rock and Big Sioux rivers in Minnehaha County. It isreported that some of these birds were seen as far away as Yankton County by 1902,but the population eventually disappeared from uncontrolled hunting.The first successful introductions occurred in 1908–1909 on farms found in SpinkCounty. According to Trautman (1982), A. E. Cooper and E. L. Ebbert introducedseveral pairs from a Pennsylvania game farm in 1908. Although it is mentioned that allof these birds were lost during the following winter, they again released a few dozenbirds (origin unknown) that are believed to have helped establish the pheasantpopulation in that local area.H. P. Packard, H. J. Schalke and H. A. Hageman of Redfield released an unknownnumber of pheasants in 1908 on Bert Hageman’s farm just north of Redfield along theJames River. That same year, it is reported that A. C. Johnson released 25 pheasantssouth of Frankfort on a ranch owned by A. C. Johnson. In 1911, the Redfield Chamberof Commerce released another 30 pair of pheasants on the Bert Hageman farm(Trautman 1982).While other private releases continued in the early 1900s to establish pheasantpopulations, the Department of Game and Fish (now SDGFP) began releasingpheasants in 1911 and continued until 1919. The first open season was held in SouthDakota for one day in Spink County in 1919.Once populations were established in central and eastern South Dakota, SDGFPtrapped and transferred some 33,000 pheasants to Corson, Fall River, Lawrence,Meade, Perkins, Pennington and Ziebach counties from 1926 through 1941. Trap andtransfer projects continued to supplement areas of the state that experienced significantlosses due to severe winter conditions and to fill unoccupied areas containing suitablepheasant habitat (Hipschman 1959).Although trap and transfer projects were used to fill suitable pheasant habitat primarily inwestern South Dakota, this technique has not been utilized since the mid-1990s except - 5 -for small stockings at the newly acquired Hill Ranch Game Production Area (GPA) in FallRiver County. As a result of public pressure during periods of low pheasant densities,SDGFP has in the past paid landowners and other interested groups to raise andrelease pheasants. This state-sponsored program was discontinued in 1990 due tomounting evidence that this technique is ineffective.After the success of initial stockings and the saturation of the state’s traditional pheasantrange, pheasant populations have been particularly high on 4 occasions: the early 1930sfollowing the Great Depression and drought period when much farmland was idle; themid-1940s during and just after World War II when again much habitat wasunintentionally created on idled cropland; once more in the early 1960s at the peak ofthe Soil Bank Program; and more recently as a result of CRP acres.It is not surprising that these periodic high pheasant numbers were the result of thewidespread availability of high quality pheasant habitat. Large scale declines in uplandhabitat across much of the pheasant range resulted in far fewer pheasants during the



a little more history, this comes directly from the pheasant management program on gfp site here is the link

http://gfp.sd.gov/hunting/small-game/pheasants.aspx

[RustyTackleBox]

I know there used to be a lot of stocking... after reading the pheasants forever suggestions it looks like they do not recommend it anymore

[Big Iron]

Just messing with Ya.

I do find it funny whenever I get invited to Hunt SD (usually with suppliers at a "ranch") the birds flushed are 5:1 roosters to hens. And they swear up and down they don't release birds.

[Kurtr]

Ok i will concede in ND but the numbers dont lie in SD the population would be what it is now

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Just messing with Ya.

I do find it funny whenever I get invited to Hunt SD (usually with suppliers at a "ranch") the birds flushed are 5:1 roosters to hens. And they swear up and down they don't release birds.

they are lieing to you if that is the case.

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here is a small snipet i know the people back in the day had more to worry about than pheasants

in 1919 there were 100,000 pheasants

in 1949 there were 8,100,000 thats right 8 million more so back then i know they had more to worry about than stocking pheasants

[DirtyMike]

really you got me there dawg

Come on, don't become one of them. This place is already noticeably less fun.

[Kurtr]

I thought i was being nice as i have turned over a new internet leaf. The old me would have said to go fist your self.