Pheasant Prospects 2012

Well it has been a while since I have updated this blog, sorry bout that.

Well now that I am finished with that on to some good news. Recently the MN DNR published their August roadside survey and pheasant prospect map. It appears that the mild winter and drier summer has produced good results and that the pheasant population is starting to rebound from the previous years. There are still large swaths of poor area but unlike last year there are a few good areas instead of just the one near New Ulm. The fair areas have also expanded but as mentioned earlier there still is a large portion of poor areas.

Also this year I stopped at the DNR building at the MN State Fair and looked at the various offerings they had there. The best find was their printed "Wildlife Lands 2011" maps which are about the size of the state highway map but each one only covers half of the state. These show the location of all of the WMAs in the state and there is one for southern Minnesota as well as one for northern Minnesota. You can download them here:

• Wildlife Lands Southern Minnesota 2011
• Wildlife Lands Northern Minnesota 2011

Granted these maps don't show all of the various lands open to public hunting but do show the locations of WMAs and would be worthwhile to get a paper copy.

Also I was looking at the 2012 hunting & trappings regulations books and saw an advertisement for a free map of public hunting land in SW Minnesota, Marshal area, and took a look. It appears that the map is a cut down one of the DNR provided Wildlife Lands Southern Minnesota 2011 map. The only nice thing is that they have a google maps overlay to view the same info. It isn't great but it is better than nothing.

Aquatic management areas

While out pheasant hunting this past weekend I ran across a new type of Minnesota public hunting land that I had never seen. These new tracts of land are called "Aquatic Management Areas" (AMA) and sound like they are similar to WMAs in that they are open to public hunting, but are meant to protect some critical habitat for aquatic life in cold water stream. The one that I know of can be found in this area on openstreetmap.org. Now looking at the map and from being in the area the AMA is just to the north west of the Buttermilk Run WMA on the other side of Murray County Rd 38. There is a stream that runs through it to Armstrong Slough. It is bordered on the north and south by farmland. For a map that show the AMA in some detail (as I have been unable to find any detailed maps showing where these are) you can kind of make out the outline on this map from google maps which is an aerial view of the general area. The one nice thing about AMAs is that their signage is similar to that of WMAs in that they are both the yellow signs and it is easy to confuse them while driving down the road, but this is fine as they are both open to public hunting.

Currently the MN DNR has a 25 year plan for acquiring an additional 1500 miles of cold water streams. The current plan is running from 2008 to 2033 and additional details can be found here from the MN DNR in their "AMA acquisition report" which was published in October 2007. If you do not have a PDF reader on your computer the MN DNR also offers a text version of the "AMA acquisition report".

Hopefully I will be able to find some more information on these areas, but in the mean time I encourage you to add any that you find to the openstreetmap.org project as anyone can edit this map.

2009 MNDNR Pheasant Prospect Map

The Minnesota DNR now has available on their site the 2009 Pheasant Prospect Map in the pheasant hunting section of their site. This map is based off of the 2009 Pheasant hunting prospects map which can also be found at the Minnesota DNR Pheasant hunting section of their website. From looking at the 2009 map compared to the 2008 map (which can be found here at the MN DNR site) it looks like this years prospects will be worse than last year in large portions of the state. The looks to be especially true in the south west portion of the state where last year it was almost all in the good range (>49 pheasants per square miles) where as this year it looks like the fair and poor ranges have expanded. Also it looks like there is a large new area that is now only fair that use to be good. In the more norther part of their range things also appear to have gotten worse as there use to be some areas that were labeled as good but this year it looks like the best rating was fair.

Note: the above links are to PDF files. If you need I PDF viewer you can get a viewer from the Adobe site here, or from Foxit site here (you will want to get the free Foxit reader). I am in no way associated with either Adobe or Foxit.

Where are the pheasants

Well for a change I decided to put up a link to where the pheasants are in Minnesota. This is a PDF file from the MN DNR and is from last year which can be found here. This is the roadside survey that the DNR does to get an idea of the pheasant population in the state. From year to year this map doesn't change much, but there are some slight changes each year but this one is representative of what to expect. Once the 2009 survey and map is out I will provide a link to it here also.

I have had good luck while hunting in the Benson area seeing birds, but in the morning my party went the wrong way and only saw hens while the other party got all the roosters. In total though we saw a large number of birds and the other party of got their limit on opener within 30 minutes. If I remember correctly my party saw about 2 dozen or so birds, with only 1 being a rooster though.

I have consistantly seen birds in the Tyler area (extreme south west minnesota) without having a dog. In a typical day it wasn't uncommon for 3 guys without a dog to flush 8-10 birds. Also this is prime pheasant teritory with the more prairy like setting and lots of grain farming. If you can find a field that is currently beign harvested and is next to public hunting land it is some of the best phesant hunting I have done as the combine drives the birds out of the field towards the public land.

I have even had success up in the St. Cloud area but there it is harder to find the birds and a good dog is pretty much a necessity. Typically I have had more success in the St. Cloud area later in the season since then the swamps have frozen and if you are willing to push through the swamp you can flush a lot of birds out of the cat tails in this area. Also hunting here after a snow fall is nice since then you can easily find their bedding area which is usually along a windbreak of pine trees.