Should Bird Forecasts Be Banned?
Part 1
We get it. We get why everyone likes to read bird forecasts: We all want to know how good the hunting is going to be. Yep good, not bad. We want to be psyched.
So there we are, stoked about the season, sitting in our rich Corinthian leather chairs (anyone remember that commercial?!), computer screen glowing, glass o’ bourbon on the table. We read the bird forecasts for the states we plan to hunt, and they…suck!
On the pheasant side, Iowa is at an all-time low, South Dakota down 46%, North Dakota down 36%, Kansas hammered by a drought, Minnesota down 64%, etc.
That’s a bummer, but we Serious Bird Hunters who live for this every year don’t care. We’re going hunting anyway…but maybe this isn’t the year to make that trip out to South Dakota…
…and that’s how the insidiousness of bird forecasts creeps in. And for some chicken-chasers, it creeps in and stays. Here’s what we mean.
Point 1: Travel Affected
We asked Wanda Goodman, PR manager for South Dakota Tourism, if poor bird forecasts affect travel to her state. She didn’t have any hard numbers about any effect, but said that in a 2010 survey of hunters her agency conducted, the No. 1 influence when choosing a hunting destination was “plentiful game.”
Pheasants Forever PR man Anthony Hauck’s reaction to the same question was that travel is “absolutely” affected by forecasts. “Sad as it is to say, there are plenty of bandwagon bird hunters who will pack it in completely or find a new quarry if the bird outlook is not to their liking,” he said.
“The state of Iowa is a prime example. A decade ago, with better bird numbers, Iowa had more than 100,000 pheasant hunters. Last year, that number dropped to 74,000 hunters. Even with poor bird numbers by its standards, Iowa is still one of the top half-dozen pheasant hunting states in the nation.
“Another measure is Pheasants Forever’s annual Pheasant Hunting Forecast. This is our most highly anticipated and well-read article year after year” because many hunters want to see if a particular destination is “worth the drive. Any time you have a chance to go pheasant hunting it’s worth the drive.”
Point 2: Hunting Still Good
Yes, Iowa is still a great pheasant state. In fact, so are all of the above-mentioned “down” states. Even in their worst years (only Iowa qualifies for that this year), they’re still better than nearly all the rest of the states.
Anthony: “When the going was good at various times in the last decade, South Dakota was close to 2 million birds harvested, North Dakota and Kansas were inching toward 1 million, and Nebraska and Minnesota hovered in the 400,000 range.
“Dips are expected in each of these states this year, but South Dakota is expected to check in around 1.2 million birds harvested, MN is way down and is expected to be around 250,000 birds, and Iowa is projected to have its worst year ever but will probably harvest around 200,000 birds.
“I’m not trying to paint the picture that things are better in Iowa than they are – the state has lost an awful lot of grassland, which we’re very concerned about – but that overall harvest will still be better than all but five or six states.”
Note that Anthony used the word “harvest,” not “forecast.” In other words, the hunting will be good. But that fact gets completely overshadowed by a bad forecast.
Wanda said it’s a challenge communicating the fact that even in South Dakota’s worst year, it’s still better than other states. “In 2009 South Dakota’s harvest was 1.6 million roosters,” she said. “Kansas was next best with 746,000, so there’s a huge difference” between the No. 1 and 2 pheasant states that year “but not all the hunters know that. So it’s a challenge to communicate that in South Dakota it’s good hunting no matter what the forecast is.”
– End of part 1 (of 2) –
Category: IA, KS, MN, ND, NE, Pheasants, Pheasants Forever, Rants, SD
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“Any time you have a chance to go pheasant hunting, it’s worth the drive”. Really? Even if you’re not likely to encounter any pheasants? You’re welcome to come here to pheasant hunt then, gas $350.00, motel $600, meals $175, license $110. A weeks’ valuable vacation time spent and you can hunt pheasants all day long for a week; the only problem is you won’t find any pheasants but then who cares? Any time you have a chance to go pheasant hunting it’s worth the drive, right?
My point is that when I go on a trip I expect the hunting opportunities to be better than I can have at home. These forecasts are not always accurate but they are essentially all we have to use when we are planning our fall excursions. Maximum opportunities to find birds is more bang for your buck.