Good Weather For The Birds

If you didn’t use up many of your lead shot loads on fruitless forays into pheasant cover the last couple of years, you might use a lot this fall.

It’s possible, as the result of ideal weather during the nesting season, that populations of pheasants, partridges and quail will be considerably larger this hunting season than they’ve been the last couple of years.

Bumper crops, particularly of pheasants, are highly unlikely. However, the relatively small broodstocks already could have produced enough chicks for good hunting - even excellent hunting in places. Survival rates could be good because of excellent weather the last three weeks.

As most hunters know, ringneck pheasants have been scarce throughout most of Eastern Washington and North Idaho the last few years. This year a person could drive several hundred miles through the Columbia Basin, once the Northwest’s top ringneck producer, and see only a bird or two. Even southeast Washington, an excellent producer of pheasants before 1990, doesn’t have much of a broodstock.

The major reason for the small numbers has been terrible weather during peaks of the nesting seasons. Chicks died by the thousands during wet, cold weather in late May and much of June the last few years.

For the first time in at least five years, the weather has been perfect since pheasants started serious nesting this spring. The last major rainfalls were the latter part of May.

The critical period for pheasants is the last week in May and the first couple of weeks of June. If weather is reasonably dry and mild during that period, survival rate of pheasant chicks usually is good. If storms develop and temperatures are below normal, particularly over a period of several days, chicks get pneumonia and die.

Pheasants have had plenty of cover as the result of frequent showers in April and early May.

In addition, the chicks have had a surplus of insects to eat before they switch over to grasses and grains. Insects are important to chicks during the first few weeks of their lives.

Even though the weather has been perfect for young pheasants during the nesting season and the chicks have plenty of cover and insects to eat, hunters can’t expect the kind of hunting they had when the ringneck reigned supreme during the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s.

The Basin and the Spokane region no longer have the kind of pheasant habitat that was common before farmers began clean farming practices. Good, dense habitat is a rarity in the Basin.

Only a few areas in Idaho’s Panhandle have fair numbers of adult birds.

At best, the hunting may be good, possibly even outstanding, in some prime habitat areas where there are good-sized broodstock populations. Unfortunately, pheasants are scarce in most areas.

Most partridges and quail started nesting early this month. If the weather remains mild and relatively dry, they could raise good-sized broods.

Chukar partridges were so scarce last fall that most hunters, even those who would rather shoot chukars than pheasants, gave up hunting the birds. The talus slopes of the Snake, Grande Ronde, Clearwater and Salmon rivers were ignored by hunters.

Still, there are enough adult birds along the Snake and its tributaries and in parts of the Columbia Basin to raise enough birds for fair-to-good hunting. It doesn’t take many adult nesting birds to improve hunting considerably.

Quail nest over a longer period than pheasants. In fact, some chicks will come off nests as late as August. Consequently, weather isn’t as big a factor for quail production as it is for pheasants.

However, because the weather has been excellent during the last three weeks, quail broods that hatched during that period probably have done well. It could be a good year for quail hunters in prime habitat.

All this is speculation. There are factors other than weather that govern bird production and survival. No one knows how much the use of pesticides and herbicides affects bird survival. And, of course, there are predators.

Hunters won’t know for sure what kind of season they’ll have until they start putting their dogs into bird cover in the fall.

, DataTimes MEMO: You can contact Fenton Roskelley by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 3814.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Fenton Roskelley The Spokesman-Review