Just to let you know the Commission met and adopted the 2003-05 Hunting Season at the meeting last weekend (4/11 & 12).

There is not much detail in this Press Release but some...

http://www.wa.gov/wdfw/do/apr03/apr1403a.htm

Keep an eye on the web page for the reg's to be posted.

Tight Lines and Shoot Straight

Pheasant season is going ot be shortened. The opener will be two weeks later, so aprox. the 3rd weekend in October.

I'm sad that I'll miss those first couple of weeks chasing after them, but I think it's probably one the best rule changes we've had in awhile. Pheasant that first weekend in October get slaughtered because they're too dumb and too slow (most have just gotten their adult feathers) to get away from hunters. Allowing them a couple extra weeks will probably mean more birds for seasons to come.

CWU girl, That isn't the reason they moved the season back 2 weeks, and I doubt if the later season will have much of an effect on how many birds are killed. Opening day will still be opening day, and the birds will be no different, although you are right, the juvenile birds will be a little bigger. In my opinion the hunting will be better, and easier, due to cooler weather. Cooler weather will allow a lot of hunters to hunt longer, before their dogs are done hunting due to the warm temperatures. So maybe more birds will be killed. But the number of birds killed really has no effect on the following year's population of pheasants. Habitat is the main factor that will have an effect on bird populations, and the next most important is probably the Spring weather after the chicks hatch. (I'm sure you know most of this, I'm just kind of thinking out loud, because I'm bored.) Oh, and the only reason they moved the pheasant opener back 2 weeks is because pheasant hunters were interferring with deer hunters in southeast Washington, on opening weekend of deer season, which the last few years has been the 2nd weekend of pheasant season.

One more comment regarding this statement:


Last year my cousin and I hunted hard for 3 or 4 hours on opening day, in southeast Washington, in excellent pheasant cover and with zero competition from other hunters. Oh, and we had my 5 year old GSP. Guess how many birds we shot? One! And we missed one. That was it. And that's all the shooting we got. So I would like to know where do you hunt where they are so easy that they get slaughtered? I have to admit, in a good year we do better than that, but it's never easy. Last year really sucked.

Yes, I know the season was moved back for deer.

However, it will have a positive effect on the "smarts" of the birds. Opening day birds will never be as smart as a December bird... but there is no that anyone can have me believe that more age doesn't equal a bird better equiped in skill as well as physically, to out smart a few humans/dogs.

Nothing effects the birds like habitat as you said, however shortening the season will mean fewer birds get shot. This will effect the amount of birds that are carried over to spring.

Personally, I think we should go to a South Dakota approach. Late opener, can't shoot until noon.... Yeah, means less hunting opportunties.... but I don't think there are enough birds to sustain current harvesting.

Hairy Ape, your choice of canine assistance is directly correlated to your success in the field.
:p

I hunt all over. Here's a picture from early november.....
http://www.piscatorialpursuits.com/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=000156

(Note the dog.... 9 months at the time).

Anyway... Key to successful bird hunting (or any hunting) no matter early or late in the season is knowing the land. I scout where I hunt and take notes long before opening weekend. When the opener comes along, its not much of a surprise the fields I pick have birds in them- I've seen bird in there weeks prior, if not months.

SE Washington wasn't much for pheasant last year. Hun and quail populations made up for it, however. From what I've seen running around this spring... SE WA could have a very decent hatch.

Lastly... I hunt from sunrise to sunset. Three or four hours is just the morning hunt!

Kaari

Just bring back my humiliation.... thaaaaaaaaanks kaari

CWU,
Hey now, not fair to be slamming a guy's dog! My dog is an awesome bird finder...when there are birds. Last year there just weren't any. But you are right, there was more Huns than usual, and I think I even killed 2 or 3 of them. I also hunt from sunrise to sunset, with about a 4 hour break in the middle of the day. Especially on opening weekend when it's 75-80 degrees at noon. Way too hot to be bird hunting. But I do know one thing...my GSP will hunt in that heat far longer than a black lab! And you should see him cover the ground. Thanks for the pic, I appreciate that, although I was hoping you would be in it I see you have an email address listed on your profile, maybe I'll send you a couple pics of my dogs. I've got a golden retriever also. She taught me how to hunt pheasants, but she's retired now (11 years old.) I really miss hunting with her...she was the best. I've had many good days of pheasant hunting, on nothing but wild birds. I don't even hunt the Columbia Basin anymore, because you never know if you're killing wild or released birds. I still don't think the later season will affect the number of birds killed. Most hunters will only hunt the first couple weeks anyway. So they will just be hunting two weeks later. I would guess that 90% of the birds are killed the first two weekends, so which weekends those are doesn't really matter. Even if more roosters made it through the hunting season, it would have very little affect on the following year's population, because the number of roosters in the Spring don't matter. It is the number of hens that make the difference, they have the chicks, not the roosters, and one rooster can take care of many hens (kind of like me :p ) It's the number of chicks hatched, and the number of chicks that survive their first few weeks that matter the most. You will notice on a really good year when the pheasants are just everywhere, 99% of the birds you kill will be juveniles. They are what makes for a good hunting season.

Ape, you did say it was a GSP.... You got what was coming to you!!!

The only break I take in my day is for lunch..definitely no hours off! If it does get too hot- over 70 is where I draw the line- I stop hunting. Should be better this year, mid october usually is much cooler than the first Saturday opener.

You can put your GSP against my lab in the heat....and how about we add in a cold test.... Or heavy cover..... retrieving.... obedience... sociablity.... intelligence... nose... character... water...

I'll keep my labs.

Kaari

Here are a couple pheasant articles you two may be interested in.
Hey CWU, I got a gig over there next weekend, will be in town from around Thursday-Saturday. Will be doing a wall tent camp in the canyon I do believe.. Should have my YLNM with me, look me up and we can throw some bumpers for them..
=============================
Wildlife 101: Pheasants' fate hinges on habitat
Bob Mottram
The Tacoma News Tribune
April 2, 2003


Remember the green-and-white bumper stickers you used to see on so many vehicles around Puget Sound? The ones that said, "Habitat is the Key?"
They weren't kidding.


When I was a kid on the East Coast, my dad and I joined a field trial club so we could run beagles competitively. The pint-sized hounds trailed rabbits, and two handlers, a couple of judges and a gallery of spectators would hot-foot it all over the landscape to see how well the hounds handled the scent. Those that did best at unscrambling the complicated trails that rabbits laid down won ribbons or trophies.


Our club leased several hundred acres for many years - a landscape of fields and stone fences - where we trained dogs and conducted the trials.


But a problem developed there, and many a monthly meeting of the club was taken up discussing it. The rabbits on our land were becoming fewer, even though nobody actually hunted them. It got harder and harder to scare up enough to conduct a proper field trial or to make a training trip worthwhile.


So the older, more experienced members of our club put their heads together and, after weeks of solemn discussion, came up with a plan to solve the problem. We would purchase cottontail rabbits from a breeder in North Carolina, ship cratefuls of them across several states to our own territory, and release them by the dozens on our land. That way our fields and fences would be brimful of bunnies, and we would revel in the abundance at our trials.


So we did that for a couple of years. We moved lots and lots of rabbits. And you know what?


At the end of that time we had no more rabbits - maybe fewer - than we had when we started.


Think about this. We were releasing rabbits to boost their population. Rabbits! Since when do rabbits need any help but each other's to produce more rabbits?


It wasn't until years later, in an introductory, university-level course in wildlife management, that I learned the folly of our effort. Fact is, populations of animals such as rabbits undergo tremendous annual turnover, and have tremendous capacity to expand. If they don't expand, it isn't because they aren't trying. It's because something in the environment has clamped a lid on them. This is Wildlife 101.


You have to give them what they need. You provide them natural food, places to hide, places to rear their offspring, and - Bam! - they fill that habitat with rabbits.


Or, in a slightly different context, they fill it with pheasants.


That was the subject of a recent weekend meeting in Moses Lake sponsored by Sen. Bob Oke, a Republican from Port Orchard, the Department of Fish and Wildlife and others. The focus was Washington's wild pheasants and their decline.


Several people at the meeting talked about planting birds on Eastern Washington's agricultural lands. It was deja vu. Like being back at the beagle club. It has been decades, more than I want to mention, since I learned how habitat affects wildlife, and how it works is no secret. Yet here were people - many my own age - who had spent a lifetime in the outdoors, and some of them were hearing this for the first time.


Experts brought in from major pheasant-producing states talked almost exclusively about habitat. When I was in school, characteristics of the habitat that prevented a wildlife population from expanding beyond a certain size were called "limiting factors." The experts at the Moses Lake meeting called them "bottlenecks." They mean the same thing.


A bottleneck needs to occur in only one vital function of habitat to limit population growth. It might be in providing nesting cover or food or refuge from predators or some other necessity. If nesting cover is the thing in shortest supply, for example, that is what determines population size even if the food supply is virtually unlimited.


When you figure out the cause of a bottleneck and eliminate it, population expands until it reaches the next bottleneck, which might be something different.


Back in the 1960s, Eastern Washington produced a lot of ringneck pheasants. Hunting drew thousands of people to the Columbia Basin every fall. Since then, the population has crashed. Simultaneously, Columbia Basin agriculture changed dramatically. Irrigation and cultivation became more intense, and a lot of pheasant habitat disappeared.


In 1997, the Department of Fish and Wildlife began to release pen-reared roosters on Eastern Washington agricultural lands each fall. The money to do this - and the requirement to do it - resulted from a bill sponsored by Sen. Oke that the Legislature passed into law. It levies a $10 annual surcharge on Eastern Washington pheasant hunters and earmarks 80 percent of the money for bird releases. Twenty percent goes for habitat. The 80-20 split surprised the department.


"We didn't even get to comment on it," said Dave Ware, the agency's game management chief.


It happened in conference committee when representatives of the Senate and the House gathered to negotiate a compromise between Senate and House versions of the bill.


"We didn't want the split in there," Ware said. "We wanted the ability to determine what it ought to be."


The department wanted, he said, to be able to exploit some of the numerous federal matching-fund programs aimed at improving habitat.


The split wasn't the only change that occurred in committee. Another directed the agency to provide landowners with hen pheasants produced as a result of the rearing program, even though hunters may not shoot hens. Presumably the hens were to be released to reproduce and boost the permanent population.


By way of contrast, South Dakota - probably the world's foremost pheasant producer - spends 80 percent of its pheasant-restoration-stamp revenue on habitat.


Don't confuse the Eastern Washington program with the long-running stocking program in Western Washington, by the way. Lands west of the Cascades are not capable of providing good habitat for pheasants, and birds are released on this side of the hill strictly to hunt. They're not expected to reproduce.


Sen. Oke says he wants 20,000 birds a year released in Eastern Washington "until the population comes up. Then maybe the money can be better spent."


The problem, of course, is that until the money is better spent, the population will not come up. Because some bottleneck is holding it down.


Oke says he thinks the state should continue to release birds at least for Washington's special youth hunts, so youngsters will have something to pursue. The experts in Moses Lake agree that pheasant releases can have that kind of short-term effect.


What have they learned about long-term management? Tony Leif, leader of South Dakota's statewide upland game management and research program, says South Dakota has learned this:


• Manipulating hunting seasons has little effect if hunting is cocks-only, because the birds are polygynous.


• Pheasant releases are ineffective.


• Local predator control can be helpful if the habitat is there first.


• Habitat programs are the key to success.


"These critters are highly prolific," Leif told the people at the meeting. "You give them the habitat and the weather, and they'll crank out the birds."

Bob Mottram: 253-597-8640
bob.mottram@mail.tribnet.com
=============================

Loss of habitat fuels pheasant decline
BOB MOTTRAM
The Tacoma News Tribune
April 2, 2003


MOSES LAKE - Pheasant hunting in South Dakota is as good as it gets, and it's as good as it is because South Dakota contains the three essential elements for pheasants, that state's Department of Game, Fish and Parks says.
Those three elements?


Habitat, habitat and habitat.


Pheasants need habitat for reproduction, habitat for avoiding predators and habitat for winter survival. And they are not necessarily the same.


"What's going to influence how many pheasants we have in South Dakota and how many pheasants you're going to have in Washington is how much pheasant habitat you have on the ground," said Tony Leif, senior wildlife biologist for the South Dakota agency.


Leif was in Moses Lake along with representatives of the Iowa and Kansas wildlife management agencies, the Wildlife Management Institute of Washington, D.C., and others for a public workshop aimed at finding ways to turn around Washington's dramatic decline in wild pheasant populations.


Sen. Bob Oke (R-Port Orchard), himself a pheasant hunter, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife co-sponsored the two-day gathering with Pheasants Forever, a private conservation organization; and the Big Bend Economic Development Council.


Washington's harvest of wild ringneck pheasants, a bird that originated in Asia, reached its peak in the middle to late 1960s, with another, slightly lower, peak in the late 1970s. However, harvest - which is an indicator of population size - has declined from a high of about 650,000 in the 1960s to little more than 100,000 in 2001.


In many years, South Dakota harvests more than a million birds.


Biologists aren't sure what caused the decline in Washington, but research in many parts of the United States indicates that loss of habitat is the primary reason. And many Washington areas that had high-quality habitat in the 1960s no longer do.


Sen. Oke was prime sponsor of legislation that took effect in 1997 and levied a $10 annual surcharge on Eastern Washington pheasant hunters. That typically provides the department $350,000 to $400,000 per year, and the law requires the agency to use 80 percent of it to buy and release pen-reared pheasants on that side of the state.


The law surprised the Department of Fish and Wildlife, however, when it specified the 80 percent rule. The agency had hoped for more flexibility so that it might use a greater portion of the money as matching funds for federal farm bill grants that would develop habitat.


The visiting experts in Moses Lake confirmed that pen-reared-bird releases have limited benefit.


"If you have pheasants on the landscape, they're going to produce what the habitat will support," Leif said. "The only logical time to plant is if you have zero and you need to establish a population."


Releasing birds where pheasants already exist may boost hunting success, Leif said, but it will not increase populations long term. South Dakota tried several stocking techniques over the years, such as hen releases in the spring, chick releases in the summer, and cock releases in the fall. Survival of released birds was low in all cases, and none of the techniques boosted permanent populations.


The only technique that had any type of noticeable effect was release of roosters in the fall, and that effect was limited.


A fall release "is effective for shooting preserves," Leif said, "because the birds can survive for the couple of hours between when they are put out and when the hunters arrive. But it doesn't enhance populations, and it is not an option for Game, Fish and Parks, because it's too expensive."


Randy Rodgers, a biologist with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, said no matter what the state, agriculture is what drives pheasants.


"A lot of things farmers do with no thought to wildlife," he said, "have a tremendous effect on pheasants."


Rodgers said pheasant populations in his state are tied primarily to wheat. Bird numbers trend up or down depending on both the timing of agricultural activities and the way they are carried out. Cutting wheat stubble short rather than leaving it longer, for example, results in fewer birds because it deprives the birds of cover. On the other hand, weather produces only short-term fluctuations.


Grasses and forbs - particularly broad-leafed forbs - are essential to pheasants because they produce the insects that pheasant chicks require in their diets. They also provide nesting cover for hens. Alfalfa is a particularly productive nesting habitat, but can be a trap. Most farmers mow it before hens finish nesting.


"That may be your silver bullet," Leif said. "To produce your pheasants in alfalfa, if you can figure out how to get them in there and out of there before they get whacked by the mower."


In Kansas, the wildlife agency promotes the planting of grass buffers along the edges of other crops.


"I believe there are ways to get good wildlife habitat into good farming practices," Rodgers said. "They are not mutually exclusive."


Terry Riley, director of conservation for the Wildlife Management Institute, said Washington must identify the "bottlenecks" that hold pheasant population down. They might be, for example, winter survival, fall survival, brood survival or nesting success. Managers need to figure out how to fix them, then work on the most critical things first.


"You've got to focus on areas where you think you can get something done," he said. "Don't spend anything elsewhere, because you don't have enough money to do all of it."


Managers need "big landscapes" to foster pheasant numbers, Riley said, and Washington should establish several of these.


"You can't manage pheasants on 50 acres or even 5,000 acres," he said. "It may take a 1 million-acre landscape. And you can't do it everywhere. You can't scatter your money. You've got to focus on the areas where you have the best opportunity to turn the population around in a reasonable time."


The federal farm bill is an excellent vehicle for putting habitat on the ground. It provides hundreds of millions of dollars a year for farmland conservation programs, many of which benefit birds. In South Dakota, the wildlife agency delegates a person to solicit as much farm bill money as possible and to use it to establish pheasant habitat. Then the agency uses its own money to enhance that habitat.


Apparently it's money well spent, because in South Dakota the economic impact of pheasants is huge. Nonresident hunters spend about $100 million in South Dakota's cities and towns every year, and about $7.5 million of that finds its way to the Game, Fish and Parks Department in the form of nonresident license fees. That accounts for about one-fourth of the department's annual operating budget.


Lack of funding hurts WDFW


The Department of Fish and Wildlife says it will have to curtail much of its work with landowners in Eastern Washington aimed at improving fish and wildlife habitat, because it has lost federal funding.


It said this year's federal budget does not include money that usually provides about 60 percent of the funding for the agency's Upland Wildlife Restoration Program in eastside counties. The funding loss means a reduction of nearly $1 million for the program.


The program's employees work with farmers and other landowners to improve habitat by planting cover, modifying agricultural practices and installing water developments.


Mark Quinn, the department's lands division manager, said the work also enhances the agency's ability to negotiate hunting access on many of these private lands.


Over the past 10 years, the program has worked with nearly 1,300 private landowners to enhance hundreds of thousands of acres of wildlife habitat.


Bob Mottram: 253-597-8640
bob.mottram@mail.tribnet.com

and one more for ya. Kinda a summary of the meeting.
------------------------------------------------Commission decides against Eastern WA gamebird proposal, accepts others
BOB MOTTRAM
The Tacoma News Tribune
April 16, 2003


MOSES LAKE - The state Fish and Wildlife Commission declined to go along Saturday with a Department of Fish and Wildlife proposal to open all upland gamebird hunting in Eastern Washington on the first Saturday in October for the next three years.
That decision came during a two-day meeting that started Friday in Moses Lake at which the commission established a three-year hunting season "framework," effective this year. During the next two years, the commission is expected to make only minor adjustments to the framework.


The commission also established rules for hunting deer, elk, moose, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, black bear, cougar and many smaller species.


The department had proposed a uniform, early-October opener for pheasants and other gamebird species in order to simplify regulations. However, commission members objected to opening pheasant season that early on grounds that many farm fields still would contain unharvested crops and that irrigation still would be under way. Hunters often find pheasants in crop lands in the fall.


The commission voted instead to open Eastern Washington pheasant hunting on Oct. 18, 16 and 15 in 2003, 2004 and 2005, respectively. In Western Washington, where pheasant hunting takes place on Department of Fish and Wildlife release sites, openings will continue to occur in late September.


Hunting for quail will open the first Saturday in October statewide, as will hunting for chukar and Hungarian partridge, which are found only in Eastern Washington.


The commission agreed to continue the extended pheasant season in Western Washington (Dec. 1-15 on six release sites) to give hunters an opportunity to harvest game-farm-reared birds that remain at the close of the regular season. It also decided to prohibit use of lead shot on all pheasant release sites on Whidbey Island.


The commission continued the traditional April 15-May 15 turkey gobbler hunt, and special two-day hunts for youngsters the weekend before the general opener in selected game-management units in each of the next three years.


It voted to increase permit levels for the fall turkey season in northeast Washington to 2,175 from 1,425, with 600 of the new permits to be used in Stevens County.


The commission maintained the status quo for seasons on whitetailed deer in northeastern Washington, in which a hunter may take any buck, but lengthened the modern firearms season for deer in Chelan and Okanogan counties. It decided to allow hunters to purchase a second deer tag in order to shoot an antlerless deer in regions 1 or 4. The department said it needed the change in order to meet its antlerless harvest goals, so hunters wouldn't have to use up a regular tag to take an antlerless animal.


The commission modified the definition of a "three-point" bull elk for those areas in Western Washington in which hunters may not take a bull unless it has at least three points on at least one of its antlers. Managers expect hunters to be able to comply more easily with the new definition.


The department sought - and got - elimination of special elk permits in game-management units 154 (Blue Creek) and 181 (Couse) in the Blue Mountains to compensate for increasing numbers of elk taken there by poachers.


The commission moved back the start of early archery season for elk by six days on both sides of the state from what the department had recommended to try to avoid the early-September period when fire danger often closes industrial timberlands to the public. Early-archery elk hunts each of the next three autumns will run Sept. 8-21.


Beginning this year, hunters will be able to apply for a special moose, sheep or goat permit providing they never have harvested an animal of the same species in Washington. Formerly, such application was prohibited if a person even had drawn such a permit before.


The department said the change had been sought by hunters so they would not feel compelled to shoot an animal just to avoid wasting a permit. It said the change would have no biological impact on the herds.


The commission authorized issuance of 12 new moose permits, distributed among four game-management units, but decreased the number by 12 in other units, leaving the total unchanged from last year at 94. It increased the number of bighorn sheep permits to 23 from 20, and decreased the number of goat permits to 19 from 21.


It established bear and cougar seasons for the next three years virtually unchanged from the current ones.


The new three-year package takes effect May 15. The commission will set waterfowl seasons during its meeting Aug. 1 and 2 in Bellingham, after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service establishes a 2003 waterfowl framework.


Bob Mottram: 253-597-8640
bob.mottram@mail.tribnet.com

driftboat, thanks for the info. I really wish they could spend all that money on habitat instead of birds. I think it's a total waste of money. Well, except for the fact that it keeps a lot of the hunters away from the areas I hunt.

They've got the new seasons listed on the website now. Here's a link: http://www.wa.gov/wdfw/wlm/game/seasons.htm

I like what they did with the early archery elk season.

That new elk season rocks. Maybe we'll see some rain this year. Sure hope so. I just can't believe it.