(Area) The Iowa DNR has been using Public Input Sessions to share data on pheasant harvest numbers.
The statewide pheasant harvest in 2020 was just shy of 300,000. “That exceeds our statewide ten year average by about 70,000 birds. The last couple of years we’ve been above that ten year average. Another mild winter should benefit these upland birds to get the hens to their nest in the spring and hopefully some successful nesting will keep us above that ten year average.”
However, harvest numbers in recent years are considerably lower than those of 25-30 years ago. From 1990-95 there were over 1.2 million birds harvested each year. “The big story from the Upland Biologist when he was addressing people at these public meeting was just how closely our pheasant harvest reflects the amount of habitat that’s out there. We all talk about the days in the state when we harvested over a million pheasants and competed with South Dakota for the pheasant capital of the world. Back then we had a lot more pheasant habitat in the state. ”
Bryan Hayes with the Iowa DNR says the Grassland Habitat Acres in the state have gone down from 4.5 million acres to 2.7 million acres. “So we’ve lost roughly half of our pheasant habitat in the state. To put that in perspective if you look from 2005 to 2020 if you took a swath all the way across the state 3.5 miles wide from Omaha to Davenport, that’s how much habitat we’ve lost.”
Hayes says the lower harvest numbers are a direct reflection of habitat acres that have been lost.
