Work has me in rural Iowa quite often these days. In the evenings, as the sunsets over endless expanses of corn and soybean fields, I’ll drive gravel backroads in search of giant whitetails. They’re there, if anyone had any doubt. But to my surprise, so are pheasants. More than I have expected. Pheasants, along with most upland bird populations trying to eke out a living in agriculture country, continue to struggle in the Midwest. Iowa, though, has enough pheasants to make it worth a trip to walk some fences and ditches this fall.
The results of Iowa’s 2024 pheasant population survey were recently announced. According to e a press release issued by the DNR, the annual August roadside survey found Iowa’s statewide pheasant population to be 19 birds per 30-mile route, down from 23 birds per route in 2023.
The declines were expected after Iowa received 3-to-7 inches of rainfall above normal during the pheasant nesting season. The results were nearly identical to what was found in the 2022 and 2021 surveys after wet springs and summers.
“Iowa hunters have enjoyed good pheasant hunting over most of the state for the past five seasons, including last year, when we had the highest harvest in 16 years. If our dry weather continues into fall, the corn and soybean harvest could be mostly complete by opening day, and that usually leads to good success,” said Todd Bogenschutz, upland wildlife research biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.
When I was kid growing up in Lake County, Indiana, during the 1990s, we had a robust pheasant population. There was an old railroad bed running along the back of property. The rails had been removed, so this was essentially a gravel road running through the middle of agriculture fields and forests. Permission to hunt was easy to obtain back then, so my friends and I used what we called the “tracks” as superhighway to hunting freedom.
I got my first bird dog when I was 15. His name was Sir Remington Lee Wingmaster. He was a Weimaraner. We hunted pheasants for years up and down the tracks. They were everywhere. Usually, we wouldn’t make it a half-mile before we had our two-bird limit. Then the pheasants were gone.
There are many theories on why. Habitat loss, predators, insecticides and more are blamed. I believe it’s a combination of these culprits and more. What’s eerie to me is how the habitat looks exactly the same, but the pheasants are gone. I can stand on the tracks today and look out across a field to a small marshy area and in my mind’s eye still see Remington on point just before a big rooster explodes from the cattails and I swing my trusty 870 bringing the bird to hand. But it’s just a memory now. The cackles have gone silent.
Iowa still offers pheasant hunters good opportunity to chase these beautiful birds. Based on the results of the August roadside survey, the Iowa DNR predicts hunters can expect to harvest 350,000 to 400,000 roosters. Last year, Iowa saw an increase of an estimated 20,000 pheasant hunters over 2022, which helped push the harvest to nearly 600,000.
“Last year, pheasant hunting was the best it’s been since 2007, and while the numbers from the survey were lower, it’s shaping up for another good fall,” he said. The full report is available at iowadnr.gov/pheasantsurvey
Iowa offers a youth pheasant season is Oct. 19-20 before the main season opens on Oct. 26 and runs until Jan. 10, 2025. If you have desire to hunt wild pheasants this fall, start researching where to go in Iowa. The possibility of finding birds on public land and accessible private land is relatively high with a little research and scouting.
See you down the trail…
Brandon Butler writes an outdoors column for The Republic. Send comments to [email protected]. For more Driftwood Outdoors, check out the podcast on www.driftwoodoutdoors.com or anywhere podcasts are streamed.
