Do your homework

The weeks leading up to pheasant season provide a great opportunity to scout for pheasants.

A pheasant basically needs three things to survive: food, cover and water. If an area is devoid of any of them, pheasants are unlikely to be found there. Exceptions to the rule do exist, but more often than not, you need all three to find consistent numbers of pheasants.

Find where it rained

In addition to scouting for these three factors, in years such as this it’s a wise move to research past precipitation maps to see if the areas you hunt received timely amounts of rainfall this spring and summer. If an area has been too dry — or in rare cases it’s been too wet — then the local pheasant population more than likely suffered some setbacks.

Rain, of course, not only promotes plant growth for ground cover that helps pheasant chicks survive predation, but it also helps more insects hatch. Insects are key components in the life cycles of pheasants, as they comprise nearly 100% of a pheasant chick’s diet during its first several weeks of life.

With the spotty rain — these so-called popcorn showers — most of the state has had this year, some areas of a particular county might have had more rain than others just a mile or two down the road. If that’s the case, this year’s crop of pheasants will likely be higher in areas that have had adequate rainfall, especially during June and early July when a majority of pheasant chicks hatch.

U.S. Drought Monitor maps of the state, which are produced through a partnership between the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the United States Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also offer a snapshot of how dry areas of the state are, and you can also look back and see where abnormally dry or drought conditions had an impact throughout nesting and brood-rearing seasons.

Find the food

Late summer and early fall are also great times to survey how this year’s crop rotation has altered the landscape. An area that was planted with corn last year is likely soybeans this year, and vice versa. However, that’s not the case all the time.

Whether you hunt private or public land, it pays to know what types of crops are planted adjacent to the habitat you hunt. Do your homework now so you’re not caught by surprise if the cornfield you thought would be next to your honey hole is planted with a different crop this year.

Call ahead

It also doesn’t hurt to give a conservation officer a call to get first-hand knowledge of the local pheasant population. The same goes for other sources of information, too. Landowners can provide specific information about their property, while mail carriers, UPS drivers, school bus drivers and more can give you tidbits of information that will prove useful once the season opens.