Where have all the pheasants gone? On the subject of wildlife and conservation I am asked that question more than any other. The answer is as complex or as simple as you want to hear.
Let's keep it simple: Pheasants continue to dwindle in Michigan because they don’t have the right habitat and enough of it.
Why? Because modern farming practices that produce row crops of cash grains are not helpful to pheasants. Farm fields and farming equipment are too big to do the birds any favors. If you compare aerial photos of farmland from the 1940's and 1950's with those of the same land today, you'll see what's missing: checkerboard farms of 40 to 80 acres each. Those were the family farms that helped pheasants explode in numbers during the first few decades after their release in Michigan.
Those days are gone, and they're not coming back. Still, landowners can help pheasants if they want to. In this 2 part series we'll explain how.

The Pheasant Equation
Pheasants thrive when habitats contain 30 to 70 percent cropland and 30 to 70 percent grassland, hay-land, wetlands and brush. In order to survive pheasants need year around habitats that can best be described in four ways:

• (1) Undisturbed low to medium high growing grasses and legumes such as clover or alfalfa for nesting and brood rearing.
• (2) Wetlands restoration and maintenance.
• (3) Windbreaks and dense covers of cattails or Switchgrass to protect them from heavy snow and cold winds.
• (4) A consistent winter food supply of grain and seeds.

Optimal Breeding Habitat
Beginning as early as March and lasting into May, cock pheasants establish and defend breeding territories against other males. The territories, which may be as small as on or two acres, occur in weed fields, grasslands, crop stubble fields and along fencerows. Cocks expose themselves to predators by choosing open areas near secure habitat rather than displaying in the protective cover itself. They draw attention to themselves by flapping their wings and crowing at a rate of once every minute or two to attract hens. Also, their travels take them farther away from escape cover. When hens appear, they too become a bull's eye for predators.

Besides providing overall good habitat of brushy fencerows and idled fields containing weeds or grass, landowners can remove trees taller than 15 feet along fencerows. Cutting such trees eliminates sentinel perches for hawks and owls and will help protect crowing roosters and nesting hens.

Undisturbed Nesting Habitat
Hens choose nesting sites in fields with cover that is high enough for them to see over but not too thick to walk through. Eight to ten inches of height is ideal. Brome grass is usually to thick and hens prefer neither goldenrod nor wild asters. Instead, they like alfalfa and clover. They also use grass (one study suggests that 20 percent more hens chose Switchgrass fields over alfalfa fields in which to nest) and will use a perennial mixture of legumes and grass such as timothy or orchard grass.

Although hens will nest in narrow, linear cover such as brushy fencerows and roadside ditches, wider linear nesting habitat (at least 40 yards wide) is more secure. Nesting habitat must be undisturbed for about 40 days. Hens visit the nest site for a half hour each day for 12 to 15 days to lay a single egg. When the clutch is ready for incubation the hen reverses her activities. She now stays on the eggs for approximately 23 days, leaving once daily for ½ hour to an hour to feed.

Eggs typically hatch from late May through June and the average brood size is 11 chicks. Hens may renest up to three times if their clutch or brood is lost. If the eggs hatch, the hen will stay with her chicks for at least three months. This time period allows for the rearing each year of only on brood to maturity.

The cutting of hayfields during the nesting season has a huge negative impact because a setting hen usually stays with her eggs. High speed mowing machines and evening and night cutting practices further increase the chances of the hen being killed. A study in South Dakota revealed that less than five percent of hens using hayfields nested successfully. Land owners growing alfalfa and other forage for livestock, but who also want to increase pheasant numbers, might want to plant clover, trefoil and other mixed grasses and legumes that don't mature until late June. If possible, refrain from mowing until after July 1. Also, don't mow after September 1 or the field may not grow to the minimum eight-inch height hens require the following spring.

Your Local PF Chapter, County Natural Resource Conservation Service or Conservation District office will have information about what to plant in your area.