Besides Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving and July 4th, Minnesota has its own unique holidays.
There is the fishing opener, of course. And the deer opener.
But Minnesota’s pheasant season opener is my favorite.
Sure, the corn will still be standing, thousands of unhuntable cover yet to be harvested.
And the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources annual August Roadside Survey suggested that compared to last year, birds are off about 27 percent.
So what?
Come the pheasant season, it’s time to lace up the boots, grab the shotgun and after a long summer’s hiatus, give the dog a chance to once again stretch his legs, unfettered by a leash or the constraints of town living.
And for those predictions about the birds being down: Remember that adage about how there is no such thing as a bad day of fishing, some days are just better than others?
The same holds true with pheasant hunting.
Regardless of numbers, there is no such thing as a bad pheasant season.
Some years I bag more, some years, less.
But when the final feathers settle, I always managed to tuck away enough memories of a day or two of good dog work and out-smarting a few long-spurred, veteran birds to chalk up the season as a success.
Of course, it would have been a lot more encouraging if the numbers had gone the other way.
But with all due respect to the DNR and its survey, their’s is an imperfect science.
The survey results indicate a relative abundance, but from my own experiences over the years, they tend to err on the cautious side.
What’s more, I and others who own no land, for the most part have no access to privileged, private hunting ground. Personally, I do the bulk of my hunting on public areas.
Sure, I try to avoid them on opening days or weekends. But for the most part, I do most of my hunting within the boundaries of state wildlife management areas or federal waterfowl production areas.
And I do quite well, thank you.
So when it comes to pheasant hunting nowadays, I’m something of an optimist.
Just 30 years ago, Minnesota’s season stretched for a paltry 37 days. In 2009, it will run for a luxuriously long 86 days — through Jan. 3, 2010.
That’s plenty of time to walk off a bit of the excess baggage we and our dogs managed to accumulate during the lazy days of summer.
The one fly in the ointment in all of this is the continued loss of Conservation Reserve Program acres. Since its inception in the mid-1980s, the popular program has been a prime source of pheasant habitat.
In the last two years, some 110,000 acres of CRP have been lost, with more contracts set to expire in the future.
Nevertheless, the DNR figures we’ll bag a little more than 400,000 roosters this season. Not so bad, really.
As recently as 25 years ago, in 1984, we bagged only 192,000 ringnecks.
And lest one be inclined to pine for the good old days of pheasant hunting, consider that 40 years ago, in 1969, there was no pheasant season at all in Minnesota.
After a devastating winter exacerbated by dwindling habitat, bowing more to political and social pressures rather than sound biology, the pheasant hunting season was closed altogether.
Four decades later, it’s still a painful memory.
John Cross is a Mankato Free Press staff writer. Contact him at (507) 344-6376 or jcross@mankatofreepress.com.
