Iowa’s open pheasant hunting season opens this weekend.

According to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources Pheasant Roadside Survey, Greene County lost about 40-percent of its pheasant population from 2016. The number of chicks recorded by the DNR this year was an average of 12, compared to 21 last year. Statewide, pheasant numbers have also dropped by 30-percent. Greene County Conservation Director Dan Towers says the survey is from August 1st through the 15th. DNR officials drive the same 250 routes across the state every year, however, weather plays a huge factor during that time period.

“What’s happened is the drought that we’ve seen, the real dry weather, means not real heavy dew. So there was really poor count conditions. The DNR requires a heavy dews early in the morning when those chicks come out onto the roads to dry off. If you don’t have a heavy dew, they don’t have to come out to the roads, so the counts are down.”

Greene County Pheasants Forever President Kevin Devilbliss acknowledges that weather does play a factor, but he also believes it’s habitat-related too.

“You see things from over the years as the farms have gotten bigger, you lost fence rows and old rows of trees, which are good cover for pheasants. It’s not so much the big fields of cover, you’re losing this little stuff and that makes a big difference on the population.”

Pheasant hunting season is from October 28th through January 10th.