Shorter season for pheasant hunters

Eastern Washington pheasant hunters will have less time to pursue their passion this fall with a season that’s five days shorter than last year and a whopping 18 days shorter than the 2002 season.

This year, while quail and partridge seasons open on Oct. 2, pheasants won’t be legal until Oct. 23. Last year the pheasant season opened Oct. 18. In 2002, pheasant season opened Oct. 5.

Department of Fish and Wildlife officials said that in surveys and public meetings last year some hunters recommended the later season opener because second-hatch roosters of the year weren’t fully feathered and recognizable until later in October.

Hunters who said they had no trouble letting young pheasants fly away until they could be positively identified as roosters lost the debate with the state Fish and Wildlife Commission to keep longer seasons.

Also on the side of the later season opening were some big-game hunters and landowners who said they didn’t appreciate pheasant hunters fouling their deer hunts, which open Oct. 16, department officials said.

Cold, wet weather during the spring nesting season appears to have had a detrimental affect on most of Eastern Washington’s upland birds, including pheasants. Biologists point out, however, birds in some localized areas will always beat the odds and have good first or second hatches.

Quail, which spread their nesting over a longer period than other upland birds, appear to have done well throughout the region, although maybe not up to last year’s booming hatch.

The best quail hunting in the state this fall may be in the Yakima region. The diminuative birds, favorites with many upland bird hunters, are everywhere in the area, said Lee Stream, department regional wildlife manager.

“They’re along the river systems, in the public hunting areas, brushy draws and even in the cities and towns,” he said.

Hunters will have little trouble finding places to hunt, he said.

Pheasant hunters once again will have to work hard to find a few roosters in the Columbia Basin this fall, said Matt Monda, regional wildlife program manager. The basin once was the Mecca for Washington pheasant hunters, but no more.

Monda said there are only remnant numbers of pheasants in the basin. “There is no indication of an upswing in pheasant numbers,” he added.

Hunters will find “pockets” of pheasants in irrigated portions of Grant and Douglas counties and on the desert wildlife areas, Monda said.

The best pheasant hunting in the Yakima region will be on the Yakama Indian Reservation, according to Lee Stream, Yakima region wildlife program manager. Hunters, as usual, will have to buy a permit from the Indian tribe to hunt on the reservation.

But even he reservation isn’t living up to the good ol’ days. Much of the pheasant habitat on non-Indian land has been altered the last few years, Stream said. The alterations, such as the replacement of corn and wheat fields with orchards and vineyards, eliminated good pheasant cover.

Despite the big hatches of chukars in Idaho, the cold, wet spring may have prevented chukar and Hungarian partridges from producing the decent crop of chicks they produced last year in Washington. Most biologists believe hunters will see fewer and smaller covies, and last season wasn’t a banner year for partridge hunters in this state.

(Correspondent Fenton Roskelley contributed to this story.)