Maybe you've heard that the SD Game, Fish & Parks annual brood survey showed a 64% decrease in bird numbers compared to last year, and a 76% decrease from the 10-year average. I know that sounds horrible, but I believe there are several bright spots to this years upcoming hunting season. You can read the full report here. Within this report the State lost nearly 50% of the hens they had collared between last years brood survey, which is conducted in August, and November. If you recall the extreme drought that we experienced last year, we felt as though we were in decent shape according to last years numbers and what we were seeing early on. As the drought continued it had detrimental affects, not only on chicks, but apparently also on adult birds.
This year has been a completely different story. After a fairly mild winter, we began to receive significant snow fall in April when birds normally begin to nest. The moisture was welcome, but set back the birds nearly a month in their nesting activity. After the April snow, conditions remained fairly cool, and dry. Significant moisture did not return until sometime in mid-May, and then again June, July and even August. The cover that the birds depend on to nest in and later raise their chicks in had been severely hampered by last years drought, and did not recover until sometime near the end of May or even June. We received nearly 5 inches of rain in both July and August, when the average is near 2.5 inches per month. Some of our property received nearly 12 inches of rain from July 15-August 15. This has been great for the food plots, row crop, and CRP cover. The cool temperatures that we experienced in July did hamper some row crop development, but things have returned to normal, if there is such a thing, since the 90-100 degree temps we have experienced in the past couple of weeks.
Soooo..... what am I getting at? What are the bright spots?? I think we will see the opposite results of last years brood route surveys. We've seen more birds appearing in the past couple of weeks then we have all summer long. With nesting so far behind and the cover in such good shape, there just weren't many birds near the roads or visible for the annual counts. Nearly 90% of the winter wheat crop was removed and planted to row crop this year, which makes for a lot of milo, corn, and sunflowers for the birds to hide in. There is water everywhere, so the birds are not congregated around limited water sources. This by no means is going to be a run-away year, but I do believe it will be as good as last year, if not slightly better. There is going to be a lot of crop in when we start beating the bush, so birds may be hard to find to begin with, but things should improve as the season progresses.
A few other things also. We've added some great property to our arsenal, which are a few of the pictures that you see posted here. It's going to be some interesting hunting, as we figure out how things work on this new property, but it has a lot of good CRP and undisturbed habitat, and a steady water source. It's got a ton of potential and will only get better as we figure out it's secrets and continue to develop it as we have everything else. We look forward to another year, and can't wait to get into the field with all of you.
