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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Duckslayer100" data-source="post: 232255" data-attributes="member: 1485">Raising and releasing penned birds as a way to support or supplement wild bird populations is a waste of money IN COMPARISON to allocating those same dollars toward habitat improvements. The problem is that raising birds is a lot cheaper for the Average Joe to do, versus setting aside tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for land and habitat improvement.Wild pheasants came from some where. Eventually, released birds can turn into wild birds generations down the road, but your percentage of success is crazy low. That's what Dean is getting at. It would be one thing if there were still a few million acres of CRP on the landscape, intermixed with ample tree rows, cattail sloughs, and other marginal farm ground turned fallow. Then there's plenty of habitat that can safeguard these relatively weak pheasants, and improve the chances of some surviving the seasons to reproduce. But on North Dakota's current landscape, which in some areas can't even support the wildlife already there (remember, habitat is not for JUST pheasants -- big game, small game, non-game animals all intermix on the same ares) it's the equivalent of releasing a bunch of walleye fry into an acre pond in a neighborhood. Will some survive? Possibly. But probably not enough to make a difference for anglers hoping to bring home a few fish for dinner. And certainly not enough to reproduce and make a sustainable population in that pond.I realize that's probably an apples-to-oranges comparison, but I think it parallels the thinking process. If a group or groups of people wan to invest their money in raising and releasing pheasants, more power to them. Especially if they have habitat to support them. But don't expect it to reverse the downward trend we've experienced in the past 5-10 years. That's going to take a lot more money and effort than simply raising and releasing birds.To put things in greater perspective, I encourage anyone to read this article: <a href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/sports/outdoors/4508620-tougher-pheasant-hunting-new-normal-north-dakota-crucial-habitat-wanes" target="_blank">http://www.grandforksherald.com/sports/outdoors/4508620-tougher-pheasant-hunting-new-normal-north-dakota-crucial-habitat-wanes</a> You can't deny the data and the trend. We've lost more than half of our peak CRP acreage since 2007 and, surprise surprise, our yearly take of pheasants has precipitously dropped. Last year North Dakota hunters harvest just over 300K roosters -- the lowest bag since 2000. By comparison, in our peak CRP year in 2007, we harvested more than 3 TIMES THAT AMOUNT. How long do you think it will take to make up that 600K bag difference? How many raised-and-released birds is that going to take if our habitat status remains unchanged -- or gets worse?</blockquote>

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