Pheasants CAN survive naturally but they can't live on grass and weed seed nor can they survive high predation.
I never said Pheasants can survive in large numbers when numbers of Predators is high Mobuck, only that you will never see a bounty on Raptors, that bounties do little to increase the amount of animals killed and that the elimination of all Raptors and other predators that feed heavily on rodents, would lead to an explosion in the numbers of nuisance rodents. I shoot every coyotes I see, same goes for raccoon and foxes when they are in season. I call for yotes and fox and probably will this Sunday before I cut wood. Fox season ends this Sunday.
But I did say that pheasant survival is more complicated than most folks think. I used to have a Game Farm license and raised pheasants and quail for many years, both to release on my property and to train my bird dogs with. I know a little bit about them both and what it takes for them to survive. Grass and weed seeds are important for both. You do know that corn is a grass, right? As are wheat, barley, millet, oats, sorghum, and rye. All good food sources for Pheasants and Quail. But they are not readily available year round. This is another thing most folks don't fathom. The only time they are in Pheasant habitat is during hunting season when those crops have matured and there is food all over.
If all the environmental and farming practices are hurting the game bird populations, why don't the thousands of acres of Conservation Commission land have birds? Managed 100% for wild game(especially quail/pheasants) with a nearly unlimited budget and still no birds.
Because not all CRP land is managed expressly for Pheasants. Because not all native grasses and plants(promoted by CRP programs) are conducive to game birds. You've said so yourself.
At present, the only spot in my area that has pheasants is on heavily row cropped land which is broken up by CRP fields.
It sounds as if that area has good habitat which is a balance of ag land and undisturbed and is also large enough to establish a population. Again, it takes habitat, along with the control of predators......balance. Still, since Pheasants are not native, they once had to be stocked there or someplace near-by. Here in Wisconsin we have many farms that look exactly the same from the road. Some have birds, some don't The biggest difference between the two is hunting pressure and whether or not birds had been released there. Many times it's the farmers kids in FFA that raised the birds and put them out. Around here for private land to get state birds, the landowner must open their land to public hunting. Most landowners are not willing to do this so most birds are released on public land with marginal habitat and heavy pressure. For years I have been going to our Spring Conservation Congress hearings and trying to get the state to put some of the effort and monies they use on Pheasant stocking to stock quail. Quail are native to the state and once were in good numbers here. Have gotten little response as the majority of the monies comes from the sale of Pheasant stamps and not from general license fees. They feel that most folks don't want another stamp(we already have waterfowl, turkey and pheasant along with trout and Great Lakes) and are hoping that private organizations and individual landowners will do it for them. So far it isn't working.
I'm a big Musky fisherman. I'd love for every body of water in the state to hold Muskies so I could go anywhere to fish them. Problem is, like Pheasants, they don;t survive everywhere and need the correct food chain and habitat. While they get stocked in many waters, they only are native in a few and need to be restocked continuously to maintain fishable numbers. Similar to Pheasants.
If I was failing at my job, I'd learn to be good at blaming Mother Nature, too.
Mother nature has little to do with it. Pheasants are not native here and were brought here by man so they could be hunted. They and similar land game birds were not here previously because our habitat did not promote such animals. Man had to make the habitat, plus stock the birds. We now produce marginal habitat and stock it with birds than have a marginal chance of surviving. Wildlife managers have very little control over habitat on private lands and very little monies to control habitat on public land. You want to blame someone, blame private land owners that don't care enough about Pheasants or have other priorities and those folks that want to hunt public lands for free.
