North Dakota Pheasant Season Opens This Weekend!

In recent years, the number of pheasant hunters in North Dakota has dropped below 100,000, with a harvest running about 600,000 roosters annually.

Ring-necked Pheasants

Regular Season Opens: Oct. 12
Delayed Opener: Oct. 19
Regular Season Closes: Jan. 5, 2014
Delayed Season Closes: Jan. 5, 2014
Daily Limit: 3
Possession Limit: 12
Shooting Hours: Half-hour before sunrise to sunset.

 

Those of us living in the south central and southwestern parts of the state thought we had it good last winter, but then a blizzard arrived in mid-April, depositing snow and lots of it.
This is just what we didn’t need at a time when pheasants were leaving winter cover for breeding areas. And then, when the snow finally did melt this spring, May arrived with almost continuous rain throughout the state.
With 75 percent of the Game and Fish Department’s roadside brood routes completed as of this writing, preliminary numbers indicate total pheasants are down about 30-40 percent statewide from last year, the lowest since 2003. In addition, brood observations were down 43 percent, and the average brood size was down 4 percent.
So it goes on the Northern Plains. Habitat and weather play important roles in the number of pheasants we see each fall, so a long, harsh winter or a spring blizzard can certainly cause problems with the breeding population. Initially, things appeared not to be as bad as first thought. Spring crowing counts were only down 11 percent statewide from 2012, and were comparable to 2011 counts.
In recent years, the number of pheasant hunters has dropped below 100,000, with a harvest running about 600,000 roosters annually. It seems that whenever we have a harvest of 500,000 roosters or more, hunters are seeing plenty of birds and they deem it a good pheasant year.
Whether we can maintain that level of harvest is uncertain, regardless of weather conditions. As we are beginning to see, removal of CRP from the landscape is occurring in many areas, most notably in the southern half of the state. Removal of this nesting and brooding habitat will surely have a negative influence on our pheasant population.
Stan Kohn, Upland Game Management Supervisor, Bismarck