MN Pheasant Summit

[memyself@I]

Hi all

With the pheasant hunting summit coming up soon, am wondering what everyones wish list is to improve pheasants in MN. Some of the things I would like is more habitat, more cooperation from farm and ag groups, more access and ............

Whaddya all think?

Dan

[Bureaucrat]

I'm surprised this didn't get traction here. Looks like the summit is going on right now. Gonna be interesting to see what comes of it.

[CaptainMusky]

There was a topic here that had pages and pages of comments.

[Bureaucrat]

Was anyone there? If so, did anything come of it? I hope it ends up being more than a photo op and a check mark.

[Bureaucrat]

Looks like it was a bust to me.

http://www.startribune.com/sports/outdoors/285731451.html

No talk of improving habitat or actively managing the WMAs. No talk of restoring mast producing shrubs, or trees that provide more cover than stands of grass that lodge in the winter.

More acquisitions and going after farmers. If you drive through parts of South Dakota where you see pheasants in the winter, they are not far from cattails, spruce, cedars, shrubs, and standing corn. You don't see any roaming around in grass laid flat by the snow.

[CaptainMusky]

The second bullet on the takeaway list was certainly about improving cover.

I think its very telling how only one legislator attended. Pretty good indicator of how our government is broken.

I hope something comes of this and there is improvement. A couple interesting findings was the amount of current laws in place that are not being followed like buffer strips. Its amazing how something so minimal as this has an impact. I was in the Montevideo area Friday and where the buffer strips existed next to drainage ditches the ditches had little snow and good cover for birds. Where the strips were missing the ditches were drifted shut.

I hope they focus on fixing up public lands already in place over more land acquisition. The money spent will go a lot farther.

[harvey lee]

We need habitat like we had in the 50's and the soil bank days, then we would have birds. Those years we had weeds in the ditches not mowed or farmed and a lot of fence lines with weedy cover, now pretty much nothing. Much of this habitat is long gone right along with the bird population.

With the farming practices of today and the loss in Gov programs and reductions like CRP, the birds have very little chance.

I do not see that coming back in my lifetime or maybe ever.

There will always be pockets of birds in some areas but nothing like in the past.

[Tom7227]

There are problems with the first areas, ditches and stream buffering.Local authorities have to enforce both the stream setback and ditch mowing regulations. There likely is no one out there investigating violations, no elected sheriff or county attorney is really interested in bringing cases, and the penalty for violation is likely a minor fine that won't come close to providing any incentive to stop violating. On the other hand state take over doesn't do anything either as the same problems exist.