Missouri needs to engage in a trap and transfer program of wild pheasants. We have empty habitat and pheasants are not migratory birds that are going to find it. The portion of the article about Utah says the same as what I have said to our DNR. It falls on deaf ears. All they know is to babble about habitat. What they fail to hear is we have suitable but empty habitat just as the article highlighted in the author's experience in Idaho.
As when they were first established, what we need is a re-introduction of wild stock, trapped and transferred wild birds.
We have spent a fortune re-establishing a tiny elk herd in the Ozarks which we cannot effectively protect against poaching and will never yield anything more than winning the lottery odds of any specific Sportsman getting to legally hunt them. We continue to spend a fortune on Prairie Chickens which are doomed in our state because we have but a postage stamp of suitable habitat left and it is far too fragmented to ever restore a viable population. We are spending a fortune presently trying to re-establish Ruffed Grouse, yet again.
But we will not spend a dime to re-introduce Pheasants which once provided a wide spread opportunity for Sportsmen all across the northern third of our State.
In the 80s and 90s daily limits of wild roosters were common all across that region and could be again. Further working against it is the fact that Pheasants are non-native wildlife which makes some purists in our department dead set against putting resources towards pheasants.
Related to this our once flourishing Wild Turkey Flock continues to decline and the Conservation Department does nothing. Their own studies have documented the overwhelming harm on nesting success from our out of control raccoon population and yet they do nothing to reclassify them from Furbearer to Vermin. Nor have they extended the trapping and hunting seasons past the Deer seasons such that many private lands currently off limits to trappers and coon hunters during November and December deer seasons would be opened up for trapping and coon hunting during Feb and March. I wrote them a letter encouraging them to do so and the response was we added 15 days back in 2004. That was 15 years ago when a fur market still existed! Wow, Classic Government at its worst.
Our Department used to be a source of pride. No longer.
Kudos to Utah for doing what they are doing.
Surrogators are nothing but an expensive put and take proposition. If a person wants to spend the money it can provide some decent recreation the fall following the release, but it never results in a viable self sustaining population of wild birds.
