Originally Posted by PaulBarnard
Originally Posted by Blackheart
Originally Posted by Rock Chuck
Originally Posted by super T
Rock Chuck, in the late 60's and mid 70's a friend of mine live in Buhl. He worked for Green Giant as a field rep. to growers. He had access to some amazing pheasant hunting. I hunted with him a lot, so many birds. Great times.
In those days, this area was a pheasant Mecca. Those days are long gone now. With all the pivot sprinklers, there's just no cover or winter feed for them. Also, they've propagated the raptors. We now have hawks of every size around here. They have to eat a lot of them.
We had a decent amount of pheasant around here back then too. They're nearly non existent now. We still have good cover but too many raptors and furred predators wiped them out pretty thoroughly. Raptors of all kinds have definitely been protected for far too long.



I hear the occasional owl and hawk, but there aren't a whole lot of raptors around. I also created what I suspect is ideal habitat for pheasants. I carved a half mile long trail out around the perimeter of my property. Most of it has a canopy over it with lots of ground escape routes available.

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That's weird, we have a ton of raptors here. Great horned owls, red tail and coopers hawks are numerous. I quite commonly see Great Horned owls fly by or perched in trees
when out in the woods at dusk. Bald eagle sightings are common. I saw two yesterday in a 25 mile drive up the interstate. One flying across the road and another perched in a tree along side. I've counted as many as 20 hawks perched on power poles/lines in that same 25 mile drive when I'm paying attention.