Division research conducted in the early 1980’s indicated that severe winter weather was the limiting factor for pheasants in eastern Colorado, particularly when winter snow storms were accompanied by strong winds and drifting snow. Pheasants inhabiting poor, thin cover were killed in large numbers, either from hypothermia or suffocation during severe winter blizzards, and those that did survive the initial storm were at peril from a host of predators, because the storm normally covered up the available security cover.

Shrub thickets with windbreaks were developed to provide a tall, dense cover that would remain standing through the most severe storm, and give pheasants a place to escape predators and the elements. Shrubs that sucker from the roots, like native plums, chokecherries, or buffaloberry, are used to create this dense thicket, and are oriented to the lee side of the 3-row juniper windbreak that protects the thicket from blowing and drifting snow. Shrub thickets and windbreaks are critical to pheasants during and immediately after winter storms, but are also used during other times of the year, for loafing, escape, and brooding cover.

Shrub Thicket s Planted by Chapter by Year

This habitat option serves a dual purpose; establishing permanent shrub cover along the many dry creeks common to eastern Colorado, and to enhance hunting within non-farmed creek bottoms, which are very attractive to pheasants and hunters. On many of these creeks, habitat is less than ideal, but pheasants use them because of the undisturbed vegetation they provide. Adding a shrub component only enhances the quality and diversity of the creek bottom, and are not intended to increase winter survival. Two-row plantings also provide an important travel corridor for pheasants between different fields, and a secure daytime loafing area for hens with broods. In part these plantings were the motivation for the NRCS focus on planting riparian buffers and filter strips along creek bottoms in some counties in eastern Colorado, an option that most chapters are using to do these plantings currently, while spending their PHIP budget on other types of projects.

Two Row Shrub Thickets by Year

Field windbreak plantings offer pheasants a variety of cover values. Pheasants use them primarily as travel corridors between different fields, as loafing cover during the day, and often to establish breeding territories and crowing sites. The presence of field windbreaks can also increase the cumulative habitat value of the surrounding landscape because they provide a large amount of escape and security cover, and when composed of 5 or more rows, winter weather protection.

Field windbreaks also offer a host of environmental benefits, including lessening soil and moisture loss, not to mention many other wildlife benefits aside from pheasants, these plantings are normally contracted through the USDA’s Farm Bill Programs such as Continuous CRP, EQIP, and WHIP. In recent years, chapters have used this opportunity to enroll a landowner in a Farm Bill Program and work as the contractor to plant the project, while spending their PHIP budget on other projects.

Field Windbreak Plantings by Year

Year round survival cover is a significant limiting factor for Colorado’s pheasant population. From Division research from the mid 1990’s, it is evident that pheasants face significant mortality pressures nearly every month of the year, because night-roosting and survival cover good enough to limit predation is uncommon. One solution to this problem was developed by seeding small waste areas or difficult to farm corners to switchgrass. Often, switchgrass has been seeded into areas that farmers cannot get large farm equipment into, or in combination with other PHIP plantings, like shrub thickets, two-row shrub plantings, or even Continuous CRP field windbreak plantings.

Switchgrass is the preferred species of grass for several reasons. Switchgrass provides pheasants with a habitat that will remain standing through all but the worst winter storms, and grows tall enough in Colorado (2-4 feet in most cases) to provide birds with overhead predator protection. Because switchgrass is a native species, it is fairly drought tolerant, and grows well in most types of soils found on the eastern plains. Switchgrass plantings also provide excellent cover for nesting pheasants, because pheasants frequently depend on residual cover for initial nesting in the spring. Being a warm-season grass, the primary growth stage often coincides with mid-summer rainfall, and results in a tall, dense habitat that greatly increases in value as winter approaches. In recent years, we have encouraged the addition of grasses including yellow indiangrass, and forbs like alfalfa, sweet clover or sunflowers into these plots, which only enhances the project’s value to pheasants.

Switchgrass Plantings by Chapter and Year

Food plots encouraged by PHIP encompass two types of projects, including, plots that are seeded to a forage and grain sorghum mix, and those that chapters now refer to as “natural” food plots, which consist of annual forbs such as kochia, annual sunflowers and giant ragweed. Both types of plots serve a similar purpose -create a dense, tall, secure habitat that also contains a food component, either in the form of a grain like corn or sorghum, or a seed, like annual sunflower. Chapters can either plant the sorghum mix to provide a food plot, or depending on location, can often disk or mechanically disturb a plot to encourage annual forbs to grow. Commonly known as disturbance tillage, this practice creates good habitat in all but the driest years, but requires special attention to the timing and degree of disturbance. Planted food plots are more predictable in success, but obviously require sufficient rainfall to grow and produce food and cover.

Pheasants use food plots as soon as the plot has grown enough to provide cover, which normally means use begins sometime during or after wheat harvest in July, and use continues through the fall, winter and spring months. It is very common to flush hens with broods out of both planted and disturbance plots during summer, as both provide two things chicks need – shade from the summer sun, and insects for food. Food plot attractiveness to pheasants also makes them an outstanding place to hunt and harvest pheasants. In the mid 1990’s, a harvest survey showed that hunters who hunted food plots shot 3-4 times as many roosters per hour effort than hunters that hunted other cover types. For this reason, and the survival benefits that food plots provide, PHIP is exploring all avenues to increase their prevalence and distribution in PHIP areas of eastern Colorado. Many of these plots are enrolled in the Division’s Walk-In Access Program, and are very popular with hunters.

Today’s Federal Farm Bill programs represent a tremendous opportunity to impact pheasant habitat on a region-wide scale. The Conservation Reserve Program is the largest of the farm bill programs, and could secure large parcels of habitat for pheasants and other wildlife. Unfortunately, early enrollments did not address species requirements, due to the varieties of grass that were seeded, primarily smooth brome and other short grasses in Colorado.

Unlike 1985, the 1996 Farm Bill resulted in an equal focus of soil and water conservation with wildlife habitat. In turn, the Division created a grass mix specifically tuned to produce the type of grass cover pheasants could flourish in. This mix, known as the CP-4D pheasant mix, includes a 50% switchgrass and 20% yellow indiangrass component in any soil type, while the remaining 30% of the mix is made up of a minimum of three grasses, based on soil type, and either a forb or shrub component. In 1998, we added an option to the PHIP habitat guidelines that allowed chapters to provide a one-time $5/acre incentive payment to landowners that were interested in planting the pheasant grass mix into their new or enhanced CRP. Since that time, chapters have provided incentives to landowners to plant over 34,000 acres of the CP-4D pheasant mix. Many of those acres are on the verge of blooming into tremendous cover for pheasants.

CRP planted to the CP-4D pheasant mix will positively impact the deficit in year-round survival cover, which appears to be the most significant limiting factor for pheasants in eastern Colorado. This is especially true for birds that currently do not find acceptable night-roosting habitat and are forced to roost in poor quality wheat stubble or CRP. These grass stands will also create large blocks of undisturbed nesting cover, and will also help to reduce mortality during and after strong winter storms, due to the fact that switchgrass and yellow indiangrass stand up well to blowing and drifting snow.

Acres of CP-4D Pheasant Mix CRP Planted by Chapter and Year

No more striking decline in habitat quality for pheasants exists in Colorado than the decline in quality and quantity of wheat stubble. During a Division research study conducted in the mid 1960’s, wheat stubble and weed canopy in the core pheasant range of eastern Colorado averaged nearly 20 inches tall. Similar studies conducted in the mid 1990’s resulted in averages of only 8-10 inches tall, and that today’s best quality stubble was equivalent to the average in 1960’s era wheat stubble. The importance of this decline is not always obvious or intuitive with regards to region-wide pheasant populations, most of which depend on wheat stubble. Pheasants, originally being grassland birds, have adapted to using green wheat and wheat stubble as an alternate habitat in Colorado. Needless to say, whether nesting in green wheat in the spring or night-roosting in wheat stubble in the winter, both wheat and stubble play a critical role in pheasant population dynamics. In the 1990’s, the Division also compared survival rates of pheasants in different qualities of stubble. Results were not surprising, with pheasants in tall weedy wheat stubble showing much higher winter survival than birds in ‘average’ or ‘below average’ wheat stubble complexes. As a result, in 2001 a practice was created in PHIP that allowed chapters to provide a $5/acre incentive to farmers to leave wheat stubble tall and unsprayed after harvest.

The Pheasant Habitat Improvement Program, or PHIP, is a joint effort of Pheasants Forever chapters and the Colorado Division of Wildlife to improve pheasant habitat in eastern Colorado. What began in 1992 with a few volunteers from 3 chapters has grown into a program with 11 participating Pheasants Forever Chapters and a phenomenal record of accomplishment. Contributions now come from a cast of hundreds of people: chapter volunteers, landowners, Future Farmer members, Boy Scouts, Explorer Scouts, Soil Conservation Districts, Natural Resource Conservation Districts, and other community groups in addition to Division of Wildlife District Wildlife Managers and biologists.

Each chapter signs a cooperative agreement with the Division agreeing to improve pheasant habitat in their area following a set of guidelines. The guidelines specify what kinds of habitat, how big plantings can be, types of shrubs or species of grass, reimbursement rates, etc. Chapters then contact landowners to explain the program and discuss the various habitat options. Arrangements are made to prepare the sites for planting, then chapter volunteers either plant the habitat or subcontract with someone to do the work. PHIP cost-share rates are set to cover the costs of habitat plantings; generally there is no cost to landowners.

Habitat improvement options are designed to improve pheasant survival, nest success, or both. The most popular option has been 12-row shrub thickets accompanied by 3-row juniper windbreaks on the north and west sides. Over 1,350 of these thicket/windbreak combinations have been planted to date. Plums are most commonly planted in the thicket, and Rocky Mountain junipers in the windbreak, but other species can be used as well. Chapters are increasingly cost sharing on field windbreaks with the NRCS or local Soil Conservation Districts (16 miles planted so far!). Other options for woody plantings include 2-row shrub plantings along creek bottoms (Over 16 miles of these planted!).

Switchgrass plots are another habitat option gaining in popularity. Switchgrass is a native, warm-season grass that grows tall enough to conceal pheasants and their nests, and has a coarse enough stalk that it remains standing and continues to provide cover in winter when it is needed the most. Switchgrass plots are typically put in small unfarmed areas that are present on many farms. About 1,500 acres at 280 sites have been planted to switchgrass so far.

Sorghum food plots have proven to be a popular habitat option with pheasants and pheasant hunters alike. Pheasants like them because they provide brood cover in the summer and a dependable food source and good cover in the fall and winter. Hunters like them because harvest surveys conducted by the Division of Wildlife showed their success was 3-4 times higher when hunting food plots than when hunting other cover types. Food plots have typically gone into Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) fields, or in the corners of fields under center-pivot irrigation. A $40/acre payment is available for food plots, and about 600-700 acres are planted each fall.

More recently, a major initiative has been cost-sharing on grass mixes being planted into CRP fields to encourage landowners to plant grasses that will provide outstanding cover for pheasants and other wildlife. Because of this $5/acre cost-share, over 20,000 acres of CRP have been planted to a pheasant mix containing large percentages of switchgrass and yellow indiangrass. In time, these fields will increase pheasant survival and nest success, and provide high quality hunting cover as well.

Whether you are a landowner looking to improve pheasant habitat, or someone just interested in helping out, the PHIP program may be for you. Contact any Pheasants Forever chapter, or the Division of Wildlife for more information.