A ,<L 
. unni mm SURVEY 
J AN 10 1969 
UB/Mffi 
MONTHLY WILDLIFE RESEARCH LETTER 
Department of Conservation and Natural History Survey, Cooperating 
Glen C. Sanderson and Helen C. Schultz, Editors 
6 
Urbana, 111inois 
December, 1 968 
Vo 1. II, No. 12 
I• Pheasant Popu1 ations and Land Use 
S. L- Etter, R. E. Greenberg 
From 1962 through 1964, a total of 1,190 juvenile cock pheasants were captured 
by night1ighting, marked with back tags and bands, and released on the Sibley Study 
Area during the period October 1-November 11. Of these marked juveniles, 476 (40 per¬ 
cent) were shot during the following hunting seasons. The proportion of marked cocks 
that were killed differed considerably in relation to the dates on which they were 
tagged. Of 502 cocks marked during the first trapping period (October 1-21), only 171 
(34 percent) were shot, compared with 305 (44 percent) of 688 cocks marked during the 
last trapping period (October 22-November 11). Statistical analysis of these data 
indicated that the observed differences were highly significant (P = <^0.01) - Data 
for individual years were consistent with the combined data, but the sample sizes 
were too small to demonstrate statistical significance. 
The above data indicate that a significant mortality of juvenile cock pheasants 
occurs before the opening of the hunting season. Based upon the figures reported, an 
estimated 23 percent of the juvenile cock pheasants alive at the midpoint of the first 
trapping period fail to survive until the midpoint of the second trapping period. 
Assuming that this mortality rate remains constant until the beginning of the hunting 
season, it appears that as many as 40 percent more cock pheasants would be available 
to hunters if the hunting season began in mid-October rather than in mid-November. 
While a mid-October opening of the pheasant season in Illinois is unrealistic because 
of large acreages of standing corn, these findings strongly suggest that the pheasant 
season should begin on the earliest date permitted by existing agricultural practices. 
2. Manipul at ion of Pheasant Habitat G. B. Joselyn 
It might be argued that the cost of manipulating roadsides on the Ford County 
Management Unit ($10,124 total; $68 per acre; $139 per mile) relative to the size of 
the area treated is excessive. Only a small segment of Ford County, about 4 percent, 
was included in the treated area and treatment was applied to only 1.2 percent of the 
land area on the management unit. Projecting the cost of this seeding to the 
remainder of Ford County would approximate a quarter of a million dollars. However, 
there is reason to believe that bromegrass seedings, once established, will serve as 
high-quality pheasant nesting cover for more than 10 years. Seedings established on 
the Sibley Study Area in 1 962 show no perceptible signs of being less valuable as 
pheasant nesting cover 6 years later. Thus, when amortized over a 10-year period, the 
$68 per acre cost of roadside treatment on the Ford County Management Unit comes to 
about $7 per acre per year. A program of leasing private farmland in the same area 
and in most of the Illinois prime pheasant range would cost $50-$60 per acre per year, 
plus seeding costs. Thus, roadsides can be manipulated at about one-seventh, or less, 
of the cost of attempting to provide nesting cover on private agricultural land. 
