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I've gotten a lot of shinsplints and briar scatches chasing grouse and woodcock in PA, since the pheasants and quail disappeared. The numbers of woodcock seem to be down, still shootable, but not quite as many flushes per year. Grouse are never behind every hawthorne, but holding on in good coverts. In the last few years because the company my wife works for moved south, I've been hunting in southern Virginia. I've managed to find a few woodcock over in the piedmont during the flight. But other than that week and a half, I have not been able to find wild birds. I did find one covey of quail, about ten birds, last fall, but held my fire. I've become a member of the "Forever's" and see a lot about the West and Midwest, but little about the East.
Are there any of the wild birds in the East doing well, or are we eastern bird hunters just a bunch of Don Quixotes?
Bfly

One thing I have heard from more than one biologist is that upland birds in the east started becoming more scarce when the deer population increased so much during the last few decades. The deer have munched a lot of the ground cover that used to provide nesting and hiding cover.

Add that to human land-use changes and the effect is considerable.

...along with the general and widespread lack of logging to regenerate shade-intolerant forest types for grouse and woodcock. Maples and pines do not wildlife habitat make. Mule Deer's right...as a former biologist in the midwest there are areas where deer are eating up the understory and even much of the regeneration in some areas.

IIRC, a grouse hunter in PA sees one bird per hour on average. That jives with my experience, though a lot depends on where I hunt....but on average, one per hour is about right.
Pete

Upstate NY Is a tough hunt also . In my area one per hour is agood day out. Its sad when you remember flushing 5 or 6 birds when out. It sure is hard to get the dog into birds DWG

It's a shame what's happened to wild bird hunting in PA. I live in Southeast PA and grew up hunting wild pheasants. I was still shooting wild phesants until the mid 1980's. Now they are all gone. I still shoot some wild birds, but I have to travel to North Dakota to do it. The only wild birds I shoot in PA these days are Doves and Geese.

Pa can still provide productive Grouse hunting if you live or are willing to drive to the Northern tier. How long will it last?

Pheasants? Well the good old days are gone. We still have much cover that could be productive. I partly blame the GC in that possibly their stocked birds diluted the genetic wild DNA. However, I can say that the GC also would not be that enthusiastic of a return to that time. On the opening day things could get a little hectic. Not all that sure the farmers would embrace it either.

Doves? Numbers are way down in my area. Then again so are the grain crops.

Quail? Never were and overabundance, although in my younger days a covey could be occasionally found. That had a hard time in increasing their numbers in Pa.

Rabbits? A individual with good dogs can still have great shooting of the smaller cottontail species. Haven't seen a big giant woods rabbit in years. Some of them were huge.

With the decrease in trapping, the nest robber numbers has increased. I.E. raccoons, skunks, possums. The hawk and owl numbers are up since they are off limits as far as controlling their numbers.

Some worry that our game birds have reached a critical low where natural regeneration may be impossible. Or perhaps our game birds are indicative of something else going on. Kind of like the old coal mine canary. Acid rain? Ticks? Even song bird numbers have dropped off dramatically.

I say you are correct. Oh for the days of three and four birds per hour and 30 or 40 flushes per day. You could make a good to great Grouse dog in short order before they hit their prime.

battue,

Many biologists west of the Mississippi have come to the conclusion that planted birds are usually a bad idea, because they're resistant to many diseases that wild birds aren't. Plant a few farm pheasants and the wild birds may die. Also, pen-raised birds are more aggressive, which doesn't help.

The same thing has been determined about hatchery trout, the reason Montana rivers haven't been planted in 30-some years. And yes, the fishing is a lot better.

Despite that, there's still a state program in Montana that pays people to raise pheasants and plant them on a few farms, supposedly to "enhance" the population. But it's essentially another socialist-welfare program, though primarly promoted by a RINO.

MD

I have to agree. However, put and take Pheasant is about all we have left. There are a few spots where wild Pheasant have managed to hold on. But they are rare. Good chance they are a cross of the original wild birds and stocked, but they do reproduce.

Shame really. Most don't realize just how good a Pheasant State Pa. was at one time. It wasn't uncommon for them to exist around peoples homes in the Pittsburgh area. There was that much overflow. Within 4 to 5 miles of where I sit you could flush 30 birds per day. In the farm lands you could flush a 100. The area has changed, but not to the point they should disappear. The GC says Pa is not good Pheasant habitat and that you need large tracks of unbroken land. While not Dakota quality, at one time it still was fantastic. The officers of today will often look at you funny when you mention how many reproducing birds we had. They also at one time said the Wild Turkey could only flourish in the big woods. Now we have them within the city limits of downtown Pittsburgh.

IMO, Hawks, Owls and the ground predators are playing hell with all Pa. birds in general. However, the avian predators are untouchables in today's environment.

Yeah, I have heard how good it was. A well-known trout fisherman who moved her from Montana, Al Troth, has told me about the good old days in PA!

Predators do make a difference. However, we have plenty out here in the West, too, and in areas with enough good cover there are good numbers of wild pheasants--sometimes. Then there are those years when you have to walk miles to put up one rooster!

Have seen the avian's out in the Dakotas and Kansas. No doubt there is a bunch of them. The flip side is the bird numbers are so great that reproduction more than makes up for their take. In Pa it is also hard not to be in sight of a tree where they can sit and wait.

Once had a Grouse come gliding just over my head followed by a Hawk. The Grouse made it to a thick pine. The Hawk lit on a tree limb and waited. I tried to get the Grouse to fly away by standing and shaking the branches. It wouldn't fly. I often wondered how that standoff ended.

Thats is the biggest negative influance on the bird populations within the nation forest lands of east tn...
...the tree huggers are contiuously screaming for total old growth forest structure....

Thanks, sadly the pheasants are just memories here. We diehards still shoot a few put and take birds, but the terrific natural pheasant hunting is gone, as are the quail which were also here in huntable numbers until the early eighties. They disappeared in '82, the pheasants in'84. I grew up farming and farmed partime up until about five years ago. We used to delay our first haycutting so we wouldn't destroy so many nests. We often would kill a hen while mowing and put the eggs under a hen or bantam for them to raise the chicks. No need to delay mowing anymore. I usually only get one or two grouse flushes per day here in the southcentral part of the state. I suspect a combination of clearcuts and fires would do wonders for the grouse populations. I hunt other parts of the state where there are more grouse, but hunting with your great grandfathers gun, in coverts where he hunted has value beyond the birds in your bag.
I was just curious if the gradual decline I've seen particularly over the last thirty years was as widespread as I suspected. Seems it is. My son and my son in law never saw great bird hunting, and may never see it. Damn!
Bfly

Ditto here in Maryland.
We grew up with birds about everywhere. It was no big deal to find four to eight good coveys per day without a dog. Pheasants were always hit or miss unless you moved further north of us to the PA border or out toward the piedmont. We would come accross them often enough to keep us honest.
When the farming changed and the rural land got split into little lawns the birds dissapeared. There are still some decent bird numbers on the eastern shore where the landowners work on the habitat. One of my aquaintences in DNR manages a medium sized parcel @ 2000 acres in Dorchester county that produces @ 500-600 birds for them a year but they work hard to keep them protected and happy with LOTS of habitat work and predator elimination.
We still have some grouse numbers out in western Maryland and a limited fall flight of Woodcock that can be hit or miss in our area of southern Maryland.
Had better luck in South Carolina in the late 80's, early 90's even on public land finding quail. The timber companies keep the habitat in better condition for the cover they need. Food is the limiting factor down there.
We travel to South Dakota, Iowa, and Kansas to hunt upland birds.