(Radio Iowa) – The pheasant season is underway amidst a resurgence in the number of birds available and success by hunters. D-N-R wildlife biologist Todd Bogenschutz says habitat is a key for bird numbers and the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is the main component. “You know, Iowa as a state is doing pretty well with C-R-P. We probably have more than any of the states are joining us, Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Illinois,” he says. ” But that being said, we are down from our historic enrollments like back in the mid 90s.” The C-R-P program pays farmers to take some land out of regular crop production and it is planted with grasses and other cover crops. Weather is another factor in pheasant populations.

“We had a pretty uh significant turn of weather for about five years there in the late 2000s. That really drove our populations down, but since then we’ve come back to kind of more normal Mother Nature, since about 2013,” he says. He says you can see the direct impact on the pheasant population since the change in weather. “Counts have generally showed a steady increase since then. And you know, that’s why, we’ve gotten a lot more notoriety, I guess, let’s say in the last four years or so, because our counts have come back up,” Bogenschutz says. “I mean, we’re not back to million bird harvest or anything like that. But, you know, half a million still a very respectable number. Half million plus.”

Bogenschutz says increasing pheasant harvest would take a change in the farm policy. ” You know, if we have farm policy, that would push C-R-P back to what we saw in the mid 90s. I absolutely think we could, we could harvest a million birds,” he says. The D-N-R will celebrate the 100th pheasant next fall.