I have homes in Mt and SD, as well as holdings in ND. I hunt across all three from the first of Sept until the end of the season in SD which is usually the first Sunday in January.
The changes in habitat that I see and hunt now, are staggering.
Between no favorable farm bill for Conservation and the impact of every farmer planting substantial holdings in corn for Ethanol, the mind blowing days of hundred bird flushes are now near an end. As more ethanol plants are being built, like the one in Spirit wood ND, farmers who traditionally were not corn farmers are changing over.
To maximize their returns, they are draining sloughs, bulldozing shelter belts and plowing CRP.
I can't tell you how sad or ugly it is to see bulldozers pushing over hundred year old shelter belts and with their destruction, more wildlife than just pheasants are left exposed to the elements. Additionally, stretches of highways that were kept free from snow drifts by the shelter belts are now often impassable for some time with each storm that rolls across the prairie.
I am just telling it to you the way it is, for it is what it is, but the High Plains are becoming unrecognizable for what they were as little as 5 or six years ago. And the bird population that they supported is now gone or on the way out.
I wait anxiously for word out of Pierre on how the state will react to all this, as they have developed pheasant hunting into a really big business over the last two decades. I want to believe that they will not allow that revenue to dry up and will become pro active for perpetuating bird population, if not as great as in years past, at least much greater than their numbers have dropped off in the last three or four years.
