The Outdoors

By Scott Rall, Outdoors Columnist

By the time you read this, the 22-23 pheasant hunting season will have come to a close. My Dad always used to tell me that if you want to see how fast time flies, take out a 90-day note at the bank. I will add to that with how time flies, just see how fast a 10-week pheasant season vanishes.

I had a very good season with more birds harvested this year over last. Like every year the later into the season you get, the smarter the roosters that are still alive become. They have been hunted by us and everything else in the wild that wants to make a meal of them.

Birds of prey like red tail hawks and others do a pretty good job of feasting on birds like pheasants. Humans take their share, but science has proven that hunting males only has almost no noticeable difference in the populations the following year. Many folks will tell me there is no way that is true.

Consider for a moment what many different research projects have proven over the past 50 years. It takes only one rooster for every 42 remaining hens to sustain a population.  Roosters will breed many hens over the course of a reproductive season. It takes only one rooster for every 24 hens to grow a population. Statistics show that in most places the rooster to hen ratio at the end of the hunting season is 1-4.

Consider this. If the normal hunting season had closed and we magically harvest 50% of all the remaining roosters on the landscape, that would make the ratio 1-8. If we then harvested 50% of those that yet remained the ratio would settle at 1-16.

This is more then enough roosters to breed all of the available hens the following spring. We could easily sustain pheasant populations even if we harvested 75% more roosters than hunters and natural mortality take over the course of a normal year. It just goes to show you that hens are the key component in the reproductive cycle.

Habitat and weather determine to the greatest extent how many birds you will see in the fall of 2024.

I had a few firsts this season. My dog Raider barreled into a barbed wire fence about 10 days prior to the seasons close and did not need stitches or a vet. What a miracle for me. He squared up on a single wire and when it came tight it actually launched him backwards. Most of my seasons account for at least two of my dogs needing some time on the injured reserve bench healing up from a wire incident. I must have knocked on the right chunk of wood this season.

The other first is that I had no skunk encounters. Some dogs will get sprayed one time and forever avoid this situation for the remainder of their lives. Unfortunately, this is the exception and not the rule. Hard charging dogs will often make the same mistake year after year. My raccoon boxing matches ended early each time with me being able to get the dog the heck out of there before things really got started. We tussled with about five raccoons this season. No dog injuries and in most cases the coon made a successful retreat.

My third first of this season was three missed birds in a row. I purchased a very cool 1970s model Browning side by side double barrel 20 gauge. I really did not need this gun but it’s always satisfying to have a pretty rare gun to show your buddies after the hunt happy hour has begun.

I went 0 for 3 on the first outing and then continued to shoot this gun until I was 3 for 3 and then put that gun away and went back to my trusty Browning Sweet 16.

It was very unusual to hunt an entire season with no snow cover, but I sure did not complain about it. Birds were harder to find late season with the nice weather because they could spread out into marginal cover and into much larger spaces making them harder to approach.

So, me and my hounds will now have to get our hunting fixes by attending the Pheasants Forevers State meeting in Willmar on Jan. 19 and 20, followed up by attending the Pheasants Forevers’ National Event in Sioux Falls, S.D., on March 1, 2 and 3.

There is no ice, so those hard water guys and gals will just have to find something to do with their time until we do. My pike spearing adventures are certainly going to start later this year and, in some cases, may not happen at all. I am ok with the fact I have not had to shovel any snow and the snow removal bill for my office complex will not break the bank like it did last year.

Every year is different and this one will certainly go down with lots of firsts and a new gun or two. Anybody out there have anything unusual they want to part with?

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If you have any questions, reach out to me at scottarall@gmail.com.