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Pheasant Count up From 2013

This year’s pheasant brood count shows a 76 percent increase in pheasants per mile over last year’s numbers. An official with the Game Fish and Parks Department says that’s good news, but the state still has a ways to go before the pheasant numbers are back at their peak.

 
Travis Runia is a Senior Upland Game Biologist. He says it’s difficult to get much better than the 76 percent increase. He says in the central part of the state, some survey numbers more than doubled from where they were last year. But he says compared to the ten year average, the count is still down around 53 percent. He says the pheasants would benefit from more nesting habitat.
 
“We know that since 2007 we’ve lost about 600,000 acres of CRP grassland which is extremely important to pheasants,” Runia says. “We’ve seen this throughout history that pheasant numbers correlate quite well with the amount of CRP grassland on the landscape. And it’s going to be difficult to get back to levels that we were at five years ago after you lose 600,000 acres of grassland. So while we have decent pheasant numbers now, enough for hunters to have decent hunting success out there, I don’t see a scenario in the near future where we’re going to be back to the levels where we were at five years ago.”
 
Still, Runia says the pheasant harvest will noticeably improve this year when compared to last fall. And he says that when South Dakota does see below average pheasant numbers, they’re still substantially above any other state.

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