Iowa’s 2014 pheasant season has produced some of the best hunting in the past six years and peak hunting may be just starting.
“The formula has come together for good hunting over the Thanksgiving holiday – our bird numbers are up, the crop harvest was late and the fall was cooler than normal,” said Todd Bogenschutz, upland wildlife biologist for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. “Now is the time to get into the field.”
Pheasant hunting over Thanksgiving was nearly as common as having turkey for the holiday meal. With the rebound in the pheasant population, Bogenschutz said this year would be a good time to restart the family pheasant hunting tradition.
Rick Hansen, 53, from Ames, has spent many Thanksgivings hunting with his father and brother on the family farm in western Audubon County.
“We would always get up and go hunting in the morning and know at the end of the day that we’d have a good meal waiting for us when we got back,” said Hansen who is looking forward to being in the field again Thursday with his brother Kevin, from West Des Moines, and father Robert.
“It sounds like the weather is going to cooperate,” Hansen said. “I think it’s going to be really good hunting with the late harvest; as good as it’s been over the past five or six years.”
The Hansens will be trailing Kevin’s four year old chocolate lab through the terraces, fence lines and riparian habitat on the 500-acre farm.
“The farm means a lot to us,” said Hansen, who helped his father with the harvest for a few days this fall.