Anyone seeing any roosters?



dean nelson

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I will second the Hawk comment! We hunted the Esmond, Anamoose, Drake, McClusky, Mercer area Saturday/sunday. A few years ago, I owned a hunting shack in McClusky area so hunted that area fairly regularly. Bird numbers are down. Our usual tried and true locations of yesteryear did not produce anywhere near what we experienced a few years ago. Not even close. Other areas, same thing. Birds are down in that area. Although there is still corn and beans standing, we were not seeing birds even on posted land, farmers yard birds, or even ditch parrots on gravel roadside. It will be interesting to see once corn and beans are off. One thing we did notice was the number of hawks...seemed to be everywhere. While we didn't run across any coyotes, hawks were a different story so besides the lack of habitat, I believe predators are having a big impact as well. Loss of habitat, less than ideal weather, and predators are creating a perfect storm the last number of years. Hope it turns around that is for sure.
Mind you using areas like drake and annamoose as a barometer is not exactly the best location to pick. Up until about 2000 never saw Jack s*** for birds around that area.

The Predators definitely take a toll but I'm pretty sure if someone makes a graph overall Predator numbers and places it next to Pheasant population Trends and then make a graph of overall pheasant populations and weather trends and I bet you'll find the second one has a hell of a lot more correlation to the Pheasant population than the first. As was already pointed out coyotes are generally good for ground-nesting bird population since they tend to knock down the other predators that go after the ground nesters with Fox being number one. Where as coyotes will eat a duck or a pheasant if they find it well they look for small mammals foxes will actually target them. These same arguments were played out at nauseam in the late nineties as well after a couple bad winters knocked the Pheasant population to hell and back people were screaming about too many hawks and coyote and one-legged mongooses or whatever the latest demon was to account for the down population instead of the obvious fact that we had some really crappy weather in it took a heavy toll.

As for the people that talk about pheasants had to come from somewhere there for pen-raised birds will eventually work are leaving out the fact that pheasants originally came from relocated wildstock not pen-raised Birds. Relocated wildstock has a drastically higher success rate when being released into an area compared to pen-raised and that includes bringing them over from China in the first place. Now if you have good habitat and the proper climate and absolutely no birds then 3% success rate will be certainly drastically better than zero and you'll eventually get there unless they get wiped out by some secondary cause but if you have wild birds there it just doesn't pay to play the wild birds will get you back eventually and do it for a hell of a lot cheaper and faster.
 

3Roosters

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Mind you using areas like drake and annamoose as a barometer is not exactly the best location to pick. Up until about 2000 never saw Jack s*** for birds around that area.

I don't see anywhere in my post that I considered drake anamoose as the best location for a your barometer Dean. I hunted the area quite consistently along with McClusky/Mercer/Turtle Lake area for the last 10-15 yrs with success so I was using that as MY barometer of what I have NOT been seeing the last couple of years. Just wanted to clarify that. While it may not be like the SW, I did just fine thank you very much. Carry on.
 

Enslow

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what’s left of any remaining crp will be gone soon so bird numbers won’t ever be what we’re used too. I still think there will be good numbers again eventually just not insane numbers.
 


Allen

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Yeah, hawks and owls have just been showing up in numbers over the past few weeks on their migration south. Not sure why people go afield in the fall every year and comment on how many hawks there are...the hawk and owl migration follows the same general pattern every year.
 

pointer

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Had an out of state hunter tell me it was all the hawks in the area, that's why we have no pheasants, just laughed it off, up ok that's the reason
 


Reprobait

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I saw this one on my facebook feed.

43405782_10216719827882164_6143814124083085312_n.jpg
 

dean nelson

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Well saw more birds today then all the birds I've seen since June combined times a whole lot! Needless that say it never hurts when you stop to take a piss and somehow managed to flush 50 of them not to mention the better part of 30 Grouse in the same group talk about it klusterfuk if you were trying to pick birds. But even excluding that group I saw dramatically more birds today than any other day with multiple groups of 2 to 10 Birds out and about doing their thing and generally trying to bounce them selves off the front of my vehicle. Also saw multiple groups of sharp tails and one group of about 15 Huns so all in all Upland bird wise it was a good day didn't see Jack schitt for Antelope but lots of pheasants.

As for that eagle meme there's some serious flaws in those stats.
 

Nean Delson

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Once again my brother Dean knows what's going on. He is not only the king of everything outdoors, he also knows where to take a leak and give a detailed report for the FB minions. All Hail DEAN! He knows more than you!

Well saw more birds today then all the birds I've seen since June combined times a whole lot! Needless that say it never hurts when you stop to take a piss and somehow managed to flush 50 of them not to mention the better part of 30 Grouse in the same group talk about it klusterfuk if you were trying to pick birds. But even excluding that group I saw dramatically more birds today than any other day with multiple groups of 2 to 10 Birds out and about doing their thing and generally trying to bounce them selves off the front of my vehicle. Also saw multiple groups of sharp tails and one group of about 15 Huns so all in all Upland bird wise it was a good day didn't see Jack schitt for Antelope but lots of pheasants.

As for that eagle meme there's some serious flaws in those stats.
 

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