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Old 09-13-2020, 11:05 PM
JA Boomer JA Boomer is offline
 
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Default Decline in Upland Bird Populations

Wanted to get some other opinions on this theory.

It seems to me the ring-necked pheasant, sharp-tailed grouse, and to a lessor extend the gray (Hungarian) partridge populations have been steadily declining in the 23 years that I have been hunting. And that's not even going back to the tales my Dad tells of bird populations in the 70s and 80s - with all wild pheasant to boot!

When I drive around the farmland of southern Alberta these days I notice two things. Farmers are farming as close as possible to roads (including cutting and baling the ditches they can't seed), and the highway departments are mowing more and more of the shoulders/ditches. These activities combined would seem to have a detrimental effect of the habitat for our upland species.

Other than more hunting activity (and I don't have those numbers), I'm wondering what else may be limiting the upland bird populations compared to the past decades. Is the lack of "ditch" habitat as big a deal as I think it may be, or am I missing something?

There seems to be a lot of emphasis on promoting wetland habitat and less on natural upland terrain. Would getting long grass and shrub back in the ditches of our provinces' gravel roadways provide corridors for the upland populations to safely travel from one good habitat to the next?
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  #2  
Old 09-13-2020, 11:41 PM
SouthWestRanger SouthWestRanger is offline
 
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Predation is key, especially from raptors. Combine that with farming practices that get rid of habitat and the birds don’t do so well.
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  #3  
Old 09-14-2020, 06:45 AM
saskbooknut saskbooknut is offline
 
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Lack of cover is a serious problem for game bird survival.
Clean agriculture and high cattle stocking numbers cleaning out thick bush patches has done a number on habitat for Huns in S. Saskatchewan.
I can't help but wonder what the effect of heavy herbicide usage has on game birds. We never used to notice it in hunting season, but harvest use of herbicides has increased greatly.
Breaking native prairie has reduced the acreage suitable for Sharptail Grouse.
Winter survival depends on a food source and cover. Both have been reduced.
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Old 09-14-2020, 07:51 AM
gunnar gunnar is offline
 
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Having hunted the 70s and 80s I would say one of the most significant habitat losses is when the redid the irrigation canals. They used to be lined with grass and cattails. They(Eastern Irrigation District) came along in the 1980s and remade all the ditches with gravel, cement and other materials to prevent as much water loss as possible.
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Old 09-14-2020, 09:09 AM
JA Boomer JA Boomer is offline
 
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Well I'm guessing the province has something like a 10 meter easement or right-of-way on each side of every gravel road. I'm sure they let the farmers grow right up to the road because no one seems to care. If they simply left this easement area to grow naturally, it might be a big help to our upland birds.
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Old 09-14-2020, 09:34 AM
RACKER RACKER is offline
 
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What i have really noticed in the last 20 yrs is the increase in hawk numbers.I have hunted the same areas where i grew up on the farm and the farming practises havent changed that much.The fencerows and slough bottoms used to hold good numbers of partridge and their numbers are way down.I used to see some hawks when i was younger and now it seems like there is one on every 3rd power pole.This is just my observation.
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Old 09-14-2020, 09:58 AM
JA Boomer JA Boomer is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RACKER View Post
What i have really noticed in the last 20 yrs is the increase in hawk numbers.I have hunted the same areas where i grew up on the farm and the farming practises havent changed that much.The fencerows and slough bottoms used to hold good numbers of partridge and their numbers are way down.I used to see some hawks when i was younger and now it seems like there is one on every 3rd power pole.This is just my observation.
Totally agree with you here.
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Old 09-14-2020, 11:29 AM
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Talking moose Talking moose is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RACKER View Post
What i have really noticed in the last 20 yrs is the increase in hawk numbers.I have hunted the same areas where i grew up on the farm and the farming practises havent changed that much.The fencerows and slough bottoms used to hold good numbers of partridge and their numbers are way down.I used to see some hawks when i was younger and now it seems like there is one on every 3rd power pole.This is just my observation.
This year seemed insane for hawk numbers.
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Old 09-14-2020, 11:38 AM
ward ward is offline
 
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Habitat and predation no doubt have an effect on Upland bird numbers, but after years of pursuing partridge, my impression is that wet springs seem to have the greatest influence on their numbers. The drought years in the early 2000’s were the best years I have ever seen.
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  #10  
Old 09-14-2020, 11:43 AM
tallieho tallieho is offline
 
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Guys /Gals. Some of our largest losses ,can be blamed.On magpies,crows,farm yard cats.Do yourselves a huge favor.Blast them.You'll see a marked difference .
I got ****d of with the loss of song birds in my yard.Saw a magpie,routeing thru a nest,picking off chicks.Fricken tree rats,are even worse.I didn't bait them or anything.In 2 days 14 tree rats made there way to the dump.This was last year.Chickdees,robins& finches are back this year.Now i have to cull some jack's & domestics .Yesterday morning there were 6 jack's eating my grass in the yard.
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  #11  
Old 09-14-2020, 03:09 PM
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mulecrazy mulecrazy is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gunnar View Post
Having hunted the 70s and 80s I would say one of the most significant habitat losses is when the redid the irrigation canals. They used to be lined with grass and cattails. They(Eastern Irrigation District) came along in the 1980s and remade all the ditches with gravel, cement and other materials to prevent as much water loss as possible.
This has more to do with the decline in pheasant populations than just about everything else. When SMRID removed all the small lateral ditches in the country and replaced with pipelines, as well as upgrading the bigger canals it destroyed their habitat. They are far more vulnerable to weather now than they were before.

People often times dont give the weather enough respect when it pertains to its effect on upland populations. A few years ago in my job as a field operator i was seeing 5-10 flocks of partridge every day in early september. We had a massive dump of wet snow in mid september and after that i was lucky to see one flock per day. It hammered their numbers. This year i am starting to see a few more which is great to see. pheasant numbers are better this year than the past 4-5 thats for sure.
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Old 09-14-2020, 07:14 PM
coyote_man coyote_man is offline
 
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Some excellent points.Now throw the racoon into the picture and we ll see what the future holds for waterfowl and upland numbers.I also feel that the use of pivot sprinklers has hurt upland numbers.Only a pipeline needed and it can rain a lot in short periods of time.Farmers need to be reimbursed to leave small strips of unswathed grains for feed as well as leaving marginal acres for habitat.
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Old 09-14-2020, 08:28 PM
Larry.S Larry.S is offline
 
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Interesting comments about predation and the lack of cover for game birds. In addition to ditches, it seems the cash cropping desire to maximize yields/no till farming has led to the elimination of windrows which were once a staple on farms. Many places seem to be a sea of canola, beans, etc now. Not knocking farmers’ decisions to do so but can’t help but think it has an effect.
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Old 09-14-2020, 09:10 PM
calgarychef calgarychef is offline
 
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Many states have incentives for farmers to keep some cover...we don’t have that and it shows.
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  #15  
Old 09-14-2020, 09:30 PM
spazzy spazzy is offline
 
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Every where I look there is conservation for upland game , correct me if I'm wrong but I have not seen anything on upland restoration . Would take lots of money to implement some of your ideas , I myself would not mind paying an extra 5 bucks or so for some shells to make this happen .
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  #16  
Old 09-14-2020, 09:45 PM
jimmyrig jimmyrig is offline
 
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i agree,i was an absolute buttload of red tailed hawks in my area this and last year, that and all the early rain certainly doesn't help.
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  #17  
Old 09-14-2020, 10:03 PM
JA Boomer JA Boomer is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by coyote_man View Post
Farmers need to be reimbursed to leave small strips of unswathed grains for feed as well as leaving marginal acres for habitat.
See, I'm not sure they need to be reimbursed. What I've noticed is that farm fences are typically about 10 yards away from a gravel road, presumably where the government roadway easement ends. But on fields with no fencing, the farmers grow right up to the road.

So get the government to step in and remove the growing option in their roadway easements (then tell the highway departments to stop aggressively mowing the shoulders) and bingo, we've got nice tall grasses for 10 yards on each side of every gravel road in the province, which the upland birds can use for protection against predators and weather and as travel corridors.

The farmers will complain, but I don't think it's an unreasonably compromise. I asked my MLA about the prospect of this today, we'll see what he says, haha.
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  #18  
Old 09-15-2020, 07:01 PM
Tabers Best Tabers Best is offline
 
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I dont think that partridge need to be open till mid Jan as it was changed a couple years ago, also they used to open Sept 8 which was a week later than it currently is

Habitat and winter and predators also play a role..
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Old 09-15-2020, 07:21 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JA Boomer View Post
See, I'm not sure they need to be reimbursed. What I've noticed is that farm fences are typically about 10 yards away from a gravel road, presumably where the government roadway easement ends. But on fields with no fencing, the farmers grow right up to the road.

So get the government to step in and remove the growing option in their roadway easements (then tell the highway departments to stop aggressively mowing the shoulders) and bingo, we've got nice tall grasses for 10 yards on each side of every gravel road in the province, which the upland birds can use for protection against predators and weather and as travel corridors.

The farmers will complain, but I don't think it's an unreasonably compromise. I asked my MLA about the prospect of this today, we'll see what he says, haha.
It is not the Ab gov, it is the counties that do this at the bequest of the farmers. Farmers do not want to deal with hunters, the less cover they have the less hunters bother them. Sad that in the States they celebrate the hunting heritage, here we do our best to destroy it. Money may have something to do with it.

The irrigation districts could have scads of cover, every pivot leaves 4 corners of every quarter with potential cover. Go have a look, farmers keep it cut short and useless for upland game. That is by design.
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Old 09-15-2020, 07:29 PM
Pioneer2 Pioneer2 is offline
 
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An extended hunting season on into mid January!
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Old 09-16-2020, 09:06 AM
Big Grey Wolf Big Grey Wolf is offline
 
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In the 50-70,s we young fools had to many boxes of 22 shells. When we scared All the grouse, ducks and geese we needed something to shoot. So as young fools we would shoot the hawks, falcons, owls, thus lots more grouse/pheasants etc.
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Old 09-16-2020, 12:58 PM
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Cover, I know of places that are over run with pheasants, coyotes, magpies and raptors. They all get along. The key is that there is a ton of very heavy cover.
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  #23  
Old 09-16-2020, 02:02 PM
JA Boomer JA Boomer is offline
 
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Spoke with Fish and Game today. The province maintains a 66 foot right-of-way on gravel roads. Farmers are not allowed to use this right-of-way and it is supposed to be left as wild grassland. They are aware of the problem where farmers grow right to the road or cut and bale in the right-of-way, they call it trespass farming. The municipalities are the government responsible for enforcing this and they rarely do, and they have the authority to grant farmers permission to farm the right-of-way.

I'll be following up with Pheasants Forever and the County where I do most of my hunting.
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Last edited by JA Boomer; 09-16-2020 at 02:22 PM.
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  #24  
Old 09-16-2020, 03:00 PM
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urban rednek urban rednek is offline
 
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Lightbulb Random thoughts

It's a shame all those Bucks for Wildlife easements and the brush transition areas around the Ducks Unlimited potholes are not suitable habitat for upland game birds. Not even mentioning the miles of overgrown fencelines situated away from the road allowances.
Many people fail to remember, or are not old to know that the hunting season was extended after the biologists identified the massive winter kill of upland game birds over consecutive years. Hunting pressure had little effect on the population.
The raptor population has been increasing since DDT was banned in 1985, and its use was completely outlawed by 1990; that has likely had a larger impact on game bird populations than the longer hunting season we have today.
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Old 09-16-2020, 05:21 PM
oilngas oilngas is offline
 
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I gotta agree with Piker, cover is the key. Just drive from say Lethbridge to Conrad Montana, as soon as there is CRP, Block management etc. lots of pheasants! Just very very tough to get on those lands.
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  #26  
Old 09-16-2020, 05:35 PM
coyotecaller coyotecaller is offline
 
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They’ve been declining for the past 12 years for sure. I’m thinking it may be more to do with the wet cool springs we’ve been having. Very hard on egg shell quality and nesting habitat. Many traditional habitats are now flooded in April and May
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Old 09-16-2020, 06:45 PM
TrapperMike TrapperMike is offline
 
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Think the increase of ravens and great horned owls have a great effect on the bird numbers.
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  #28  
Old 09-16-2020, 07:17 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RACKER View Post
What i have really noticed in the last 20 yrs is the increase in hawk numbers.I have hunted the same areas where i grew up on the farm and the farming practises havent changed that much.The fencerows and slough bottoms used to hold good numbers of partridge and their numbers are way down.I used to see some hawks when i was younger and now it seems like there is one on every 3rd power pole.This is just my observation.
Agree. When I drive along TWP roads, or RR. I notice many hawks, owls sitting on fences, power poles etc. I take many pics, while going for a drive. Just enjoy the prairie countryside.
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  #29  
Old 09-18-2020, 11:19 AM
dfrobert dfrobert is offline
 
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Habitat loss, predation, and modernization of farming.
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Old 09-18-2020, 02:49 PM
oilngas oilngas is offline
 
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See my post re; cover is the answer, the hawks, owls, coyotes, foxes, raccoons don't stop at the border to check in and bypass Montana. The same number of predator's are are there, BUT the cover from CRP, Block Management, and other State and Federal habitat programs provides the cover the Huns, Pheasants and Sharpies need to survive.

In addition there are more people (and therefore hunters) in Calgary than the entire State of Montana.

There are terrific bird numbers in Montana compared to here. Just very tough access.

Cover is 100% of the answer. We kill over 3 mm cows a year in Alberta between the cows and their habitat destruction, irrigation management, farm practices, we do not have sufficient cover for the birds to be at levels they used to be at.

In addition we are on the northern edge of Pheasants survival range.
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