With the recent discussion about released and escaped birds, I felt I should contribute. I always see people saying that they are unaware of a game farm nearby. Well there doesn't need to be a game farm nearby. Let me explain. While I am a birder, I am also an upland game hunter and I run my dogs in field trial competitions. To train a hunting dog to compete in field trials and hunt tests, requires the use of live birds in training. Dog trainers form training groups all over the state and the country, where we get together and train our dogs usually on a weekly basis or more frequently throughout the year. In MN you need a free training permit from the DNR to train dogs on live birds. To get live birds for training, most people either buy them from a Game farm or raise their own. They are relatively cheap. Quail and chukar cost about 4-5 dollars a piece and pheasants cost about 5-9 dollars a piece. Pigeons are also used, but these are trapped birds. If you buy them from a game farm, they give you a receipt so that the birds are accounted for, and you are legal if stopped by DNR personnel. My point is that there are probably thousands of Dog trainers throughout the state that regularly train with live birds by releasing them. This means that hundreds to thousands of birds are probably released by dog trainers on a daily to weekly basis throughout MN. Now, many of those birds are not found by the dogs, so they are free to try and survive in the wild. Some do for a while.the ones that people see. Most perish quickly. We used to have a red-tailed hawk that got conditioned to our training groups one summer, and everytime it heard the blast of a shotgun, it came soaring. We had to work quickly, because after we would release the birds, the hawk would usually spot one in the field and swoop down and get it. It's appetite was usually full after one bird so it was not a big deal, but fun to watch.
So what I'm saying is that it is more of a wonder that birders do not see more released birds, and that chukars and quail don't form populations in the wild near big training sites. I certainly agree with the records committee on this that 99% of quail and chukar in MN are released. BTW, there is a good article from a couple months ago in the MN conservation volunteer magazine about bobwhite quail conservation in SE MN. Andy Bicek Elk River -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20070815/e751d57d/attachment.html
