I would risk a large wager that put and take pheasants are making absolutely
zero contribution to Oregon's pheasant population from one year to the next.
The cage reared pheasants have the same survival skills as factory farmed
chickens.
Cathy Nowak's remark about the warm dry spring is highly salient. All
galinaceous birds are extremely sensitive to this variable, forest grouse
included. Rich Hoyer, senior guide for Wings, took his tour group into a
regenerating burn in the Strawberry Mountains in July a few years back and they
saw 16 Dusky Grouse in a few hours. The following year he found none in the
same neighborhood, none on the ten day tour. Trent Bray lives in the Blue
Mountains and detected no Dusky grouse anywhere that entire season. When Dan
Gleason reported 19 pheasant from three different teams on this year's Eugene
Count I immediately began struggling to recall the spring weather. Eugene, as
Corvallis and Brownsville, routinely misses pheasant on CBCs nowadays. The new
Tangent Count includes Peterson Butte, the release site of the first successful
introduction of Ring-necked Pheasant in North America. Weather was bad but
multiple pheasants were detected, I would guess by multiple teams in that
circle.
Everything will be different next Count season if this coming spring is
wet. Mountain Quail numbers were phenomenal on the summit of Mary's Peak the
summer of 2015. I think Willamette Valley weather stations ended the water
year (Oct 1 - Sept 30) about five inches below average rainfall. Throughout my
life, a full half century, speculation on the decline of pheasants in Oregon
has been a popular subject for hunting columns in the papers. The ideas tend to
be absurdly simplistic--too many coyotes, the proliferation of oppossums, the
expansion of suburbia. The extremely "clean" agriculture of today seems a
convincing reason, BUT pheasants are conspicuously absent in seemingly perfect
habitat such as Finley NWR and Fern Ridge GMUs where observer effort is
especially high. The pattern of boom then gradual extinction is common among
introduced species. The Chinese Spotted Dove in southern California is an
example. Then there is the Crested Myna in British Columbia. The latter is
believed to have been shoved out by European Starlings.
i can't help but suspect that Turkeys might be playing a similar role with
Oregon's pheasants. I have also wondered if pheasants contributed to the
Sharp=tailed Grouse's decline in eastern Oregon. Lars POST: Send your post
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