Poor spring and summer weather could shoot down the fall pheasant hunting season. Baby pheasants have been dying because of Iowa’s recent stretch of cold, wet weather; many nests were destroyed by flooding. Some of the baby birds will survive if they were old enough when things got wet. A Department of Natural Resources administrator says there’s a chance for a rebound if the rains stop and the temperatures warm up. The extent of the damage to the state’s pheasant population won’t be fully known until August. That’s when biologists and conservation officers fan out over the state to make an estimate of the number of pheasants in the fields. State officials say pheasant hunting brings in tens of millions of dollars in rural parts of the state, and if there are fewer pheasants here this fall, there will probably be fewer out-of-staters spending money to hunt here.
