Panhandle pheasant numbers are looking a little better. Scroll down to the bottom of the article. Hopefully we will continue to get timely summer rains for the next two years to to keep the vegetation green and full of fat juicy insects.

https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/game_management/pheasant/

Thanks for posting this…i

So that's why I haven't seen any since 2010-2011... thanks for sharing.

I quit hunting out there when the farmers around Halfway (where my father-in-law lived) all switched over to cotton. No CRP land and no corn. Thus no birds.

Unfortunately, cotton is starting to creep father north. I'm seeing more cotton each year in Dallam County. It also doesn't help the quail and pheasant when farmers put cattle on the corn stubble and grassy corners as soon as fields are harvested. By January, there is little cover remaining until May.

Thanks for the post.

I saw several this year driving to and from quail hunts and to Colorado, mostly hens but haven't noticed a bird in the the prior 5 years with lots of miles across the panhandle

We used go to Dumas every year but Pheasant numbers have crashed so longer go but miss it.

I grew up in the TX Panhandle and remember opening day of pheasant season as a massive event during the 1970's and '80's. All cafes filled to standing room only with good doses of second hand smoke, chambers of commerce in all the rural towns offering lunches for hunters, groups of farmers offering hunting opportunities for groups and non-profits, and enormous populations of pheasant with 20-30 birds at the end of every row of milo or corn, double that many in a weedy playa bottom or tail-water pit.

Not the case today.

I compiled all the pheasant data for TPWD from 2003 through 2010, conducted surveys in the NE Panhandle, prepared management notes, the federal aid report, signed up private lands for public hunting, etc. The last great pheasant season was 2007. They've been tanking ever since.

If you could see that chart, the one ColdWind shared, all the way back to the 1970's, it would make you puke. Some years saw over 100 birds per route.

If you want to blame something, blame farming technology and harvest efficiency, commodity prices, farming every square inch of land, and farmers' choice of priorities.

Pheasant are the easiest of all upland game species to grow. As my friend, Dave, used to say - Pheasant are an exotic, being managed with exotics, by an exotic. All they need is a mixture of grass cover (and they don't care what species), weedy loafing cover, winter grains, and summer grains - BANG - you got pheasant. Just take a trip to South Dakota and you'll see what I mean. I did some work on properties up there this past year, and you could have killed a limit with a tennis racket.