ShopPosts Tagged ‘prairie’
Burn Baby Burn
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
Prescribed fire is an important habitat management tool.
“Burn baby burn.” For some, those words evoke the classic “Disco Inferno” hit by The Trampps. Maybe you’re like me and instantly envision Bill Murray’s character in the comedy classic Kingpin. At Pheasants Forever, it’s the theme song of spring.
Controlled burning in early spring accomplishes two main objectives in habitat management. First, burning limits the growth of woody and other unwanted vegetation, thereby maintaining the prairie as a distinct ecosystem. Second, prescribed burning releases the nutrients bound in the plant litter, stimulating vigorous new growth.
Grass burns can be very dangerous if not done properly. Grasses produce extremely hot fires and can spread rapidly. PF’s habitat specialists and chapter volunteer burn crews are trained in completing safe and effective prescribed burns in many of the pheasant range states.
Prescribed burning can be an especially important tool in the mid-contract management of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) lands, as well as on state and federally managed wildlife lands.
What’s the biggest limitation to utilizing prescribed fire as a habitat management tool?
The answer: the general public does not understand the value of prescribed fire to the prairie ecosystem. Fire is widely viewed as bad.
Stop and think about it for a moment; what maintained prairies as unique ecosystems prior to urbanization? The answer: massive grass fires started by lightning.
When it comes to habitat, fire is our friend. So, BURN BABY BURN!
A Pheasants Forever burn crew from Minnesota.
Get a Load of Federal’s “Prairie Storm”
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
Ryan Bronson, Conservation Specialist with Federal Premium Ammunition, left, and Howard Vincent, President and CEO of Pheasants Forever, at the premiere of "Prairie Storm" Pheasants Forever loads.
The biggest news for pheasant hunters to come out of this week’s SHOT Show in Las Vegas is the unveiling of Federal Premium Ammunition’s “Prairie Storm” Pheasants Forever shotshell loads.
What will make these loads so attractive to pheasant hunters is they utilize the same technology that makes Federal Premium Ammunition’s “Black Cloud” loads the number one choice for waterfowlers.
Even better, the Pheasants Forever-logoed “Prairie Storm” loads will function like the on-the-box-royalty program that Federal and “The Habitat Organization” have had in place in recent years. Every box of “Prairie Storm” sold will help Pheasants Forever’s wildlife habitat conservation efforts.
Nothing Lesser about the Lesser Prairie Chicken
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010
Thanks to CRP, LPC range is expanding and the birds can now be found in counties where they haven’t been seen in decades.
Along with my son Jason, his friend Tanner, springer Rosie and lab Jazz we headed for Kansas to close out the 2009 bird season in pursuit of lesser prairie chickens. I’d never hunted LPC’s but had heard much about them the past few years both about their possible listing under the endangered species act and more positively as a species that has really responded to habitat provided by the Conservation Reserve Program. What I know now is that chasing LPC’s post-Christmas is a great way to burn off excess Holiday indulgences.
We hooked up with friends Barth and Tom and the five of us spread out across some incredible southwest Kansas prairie. Not the typical 10-15 yards apart to chase roosters, but more like 35-50 yards apart to cover ground – lots of it. We hunted some of the finest remaining native sand-sage prairie in southwest Kansas. Mixed grasses dominated by little bluestem with a fair amount of sand plum thickets (bobwhite quail magnets), a little yucca and prickly pear. And we walked, gentle hilltop and ridge to large flats and walked some more. Passing roost sites one after another kept us going and then a flush , if you can call it that. Seeing a brown dot glide away from 500 yards plus would soon become routine. But the dogs kept on working and we walked some more. Looking down from a small ridgetop I noticed Rosie and Jazz working pretty hard in front of Jason and Tanner. Finally a bird flushed chose enough to warrant a shot or two from Tanner and the next thing I saw was a bird going down. Success! It was a heck of a shot and we all gathered to admire Tanner’s trophy. A beautiful adult male lesser chicken in hand. Our first bird of the day and we’d been hunting for less than an hour. I had visions of a closer flush nearby me and we walked some more. Several hours later we’d seen a few dozen birds mostly at several hundred yards. I did try one quick shot at one of the closer birds but no luck. We picked up one more bird right before sunset and ended up with two for the day.
Honestly it was one of the finest hunts I’ve ever been on and I’m hooked for more. LPC’s are a tremendous trophy upland game bird. Walking that Kansas prairie and thinking about early settlers to the area makes you apprecieate even more the tremendous array of wildlife that benefit from prairie and CRP and how important they are to preserving a high quality of life in areas like this. Thanks to CRP, LPC range is expanding and the birds can now be found in counties where they haven’t been seen in decades.
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