Declining bird populations

Talking with avid bird hunter and good friend Brian King about his activities in the last year, and he tells a story that's all too familiar all over the country. Kind of give you my experience from the 2020 bird hunting season in eastern Oregon and southwestern Idaho. And unfortunately, I can say with a lot of belief that pheasant hunting in southwestern Idaho is certainly not what it used to be. And population of birds is down and maybe even gone forever. It's just around the Boise, Idaho area. Pheasant hunting really just kind of not a thing anymore if you're chasing wild birds. So that obviously was not very good. Brian, you've been hunting that region for a long, long time. To what do you attribute the decline in wild birds? Well, I think it's just been a long time coming. Obviously, there's less habitat that there used to be. Boise, Idaho, specifically, what used to be a farm is now a subdivision or a strip mall or a hospital or a soccer field. As the habitat continues to dwindle and dwindle and dwindle, the birds continue to dwindle and dwindle. And I think another big reason is predators. I think flying hawks and falcons and all of these birds of prey, I think there are just so many more of them these days that the pheasants have a tough time really populating like they used to. And so, when I was a kid growing up in Ontario, Oregon, I mean, it was many, many, many great days of getting your limit every day. And everybody in the party got their limit. And that's just not the case anymore. It probably will never be that way again. The steep price we pay for progress.