RE: Wild Pheasants in PENN
Predation is only a limiting factor when you don't have sufficient escape cover and habitat for the prey species. That has been proven over and over and over again.
The number of predators is controlled and limited by the populations of the prey species since no species population can long exist beyond their food supply, which is one of the laws of nature thatcan never be broken.
Back when we have good pheasant populations we didn’t have sprays to kill all the weeds in the corn fields and they grew waist high in weeds, the hay fields didn’t get mowed until after the pheasants had already nested for the year, there were still old stump and stone fence lines andhedge rows as travel cover, the soil bank and stream bank buffers offered great habitat, and there was a lot more grain lost or just left behindat harvest time.
I am sure there are still other limiting factors today, but I’d bet if we got back to having good habitat with later hay mowing instead of killing the nesting hens, with the early hay mowing we have today, we would soon see an increase in pheasant populations again.
Dick Bodenhorn
WCO, Elk County