No till notes: 'Wildlife conservation habitat'

With pheasant hunting season in full swing I thought I would look at some opportunities for recreation in our area. I know we have a recreational opportunity in our region for attracting pheasant and deer hunters to our area on a much larger scale than what is currently available. If you provide a good hunting environment for these hunters there is a real opportunity for increasing farm income and benefiting the businesses in our communities.

There are many hunters along the Front Range of Colorado and surrounding areas that are willing to pay for good hunting of pheasant and deer. We have explored these opportunities on our farm and I’m surprised at the number of contacts we’ve had from around the country by hunters looking for a good place to hunt wild pheasants.

The real key to providing a good hunting experience is to have the habitat necessary for pheasants to thrive. If the pheasants are provided good nesting and brooding habitat they will quickly increase their population.

Last week I spent some time driving around and hunting in some good pheasant habitat. The pheasant numbers are very good in the areas where they have been provided good habitat such as land set aside in the CSP programs and designed for good nesting and brooding habitat.

What I have observed is the pheasant numbers increase even more dramatically when the surrounding acres are farmed using no till crop production systems. It is pretty obvious to me that pheasants don’t like bare soil. In the areas where there is good pheasant habitat planted but the surrounding farm land is farmed using conventional tillage methods, the number of pheasants isn’t nearly as high. Where there is no bare soil the pheasant population increases significantly.

The same can be said for the deer population as well. There seems to be an abundance of deer in our region. I suspect the deer numbers increased when center pivot irrigation acres expanded in the mid 70s. I would guess that the habitat acres planted for wildlife has also increased the deer populations.

Last fall on the farm we also had a couple of moose around for a few weeks along with a couple of bull elk. I suspect these sightings were the result of the large forest fires to the west and north of us last summer and not an indication of wildlife habitat planted in our area.

Along with the increase in the population of deer and pheasant has come the increase in predators. We often have bald and golden eagle sightings on our farm this time of year as they migrate through our area. Last year we had a few bald eagles that spent significant time on our farm before they moved on.

A friend of ours who hunts deer on our farm set up a trail camera several weeks ago on the east side of our home section. The camera revealed several pictures of nice buck deer along with a surprise visitor. Although the picture was taken at night it appears to us that the image in the frame is that of a fairly large mountain lion.

A few weeks after the photo was taken we were combining our irrigated corn field south of our farm house. My nephew, son, and hired truck driver all saw the mountain lion on the south side of our corn field in a draw that runs through our farm. We have since found deer killings that appear to be the work of a mountain lion. We can only hope this mountain lion decides to move to greener pastures besides our farmstead.

The opportunities for additional farm and ranch income are available for producers in our area that are willing to provide good wildlife habitat. I’m thoroughly convinced from what we have seen on our farm that western Nebraska can develop a good recreational industry with proper planning for the development of wildlife habitat. Besides the additional income hunting opportunities provide, it’s also very satisfying to see the abundance of wildlife we now have on our farm.