Bear Grease - Ep. 392: Backwoods University - Exotic Game Birds

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

This has a real shot at being the most unique wildlife conservation stories that we have in North American history. The ring-necked pheasant, a commonly hunted and celebrated bird, a bird that has it's own conservation organization, and a bird that is not native to the Americas. In most instance, when we hear or see the term "nonnative wildlife" it's tied to a negative outcome. However, pheasants have not only forged a path to being fully adopted into our wild landscapes with open arms, but they have also led the charge to several other positive outcomes for wildlife and wild habitats. They are without a doubt our most beloved exotic game bird. Connect with Lake Pickle and MeatEater Lake Pickle on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and YouTube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife, wild places, and the people who dedicate their lives to conserving both. Big shout out to Onyx Hunt for their support of this podcast. I'm your host, Lake Pickle. On this episode, we're going to learn all about what I refer to as the most beloved non-native wildlife that we have in the entire country. So beloved and accepted, in fact, that many folks don't even realize that they're not native. It's time that we learn about the crazy history and widespread ecological impacts of the ringnecked pheasant. I can promise you this. By the end of this episode, whether you're a diehard pheasant hunter, a first-timer,

or even if you're someone who doesn't have interest in hunting pheasants, you'll never be able to think of them the same way again. Let's get into it. It's the second week of November, and while my phone is steadily going off in my pocket with deer activity and hunt updates for my friends scattered across the country, I'm walking across a wind-whipped North Dakota Prairie to a small pocket of cat tails that I spotted on my on-X map. When we approach the edge of the cat-tails, I give my dog knocks the signal to hunt, and he tears off into the thick cover with his nose to the ground.

He knows what to do from here. After walking about 60 yards while constantly keeping an eye on my dog, I noticed that all of a sudden he has an uptick and enthusiasm. His tail starts wagging harder and faster. His movements are much more quick and deliberate. I know all too well what this means. He smells a bird. And now he's trying to find it and flush it.

I tighten my hands around my shotgun, and I start scanning back and forth from the cover to Knox trying to catch the first sign of a flushing pheasant. This behavior goes on for a couple yards and seconds until finally two rooster pheasants flush out of the edge of the cattails. I raised my gun and I fired two shots. The first one was all air and no feathers. That's no good. The second shot, however, found its mark. And now I'm quickly walking that direction as I watch Knox run over and scoop the pheasant up off the ground.

Good boy, Knox. Good boy. That is how it's done right there. Getting that. Good boy. So the key here is that was a really big piece of plots. And the pheasant cover on it is limited. So if you were actually with a group of folks, a lot of, you know, two, you know, two. three, four guys would probably drive past this and go it's not worth us stopping, but when you just have one guy and one dog, those little pieces of isolated cover are actually exactly what we are looking for because it's a lot easier to work that way. And Knox was all over those. That was awesome. Hopefully you heard me say in there that I was hunting on a big piece of plots. Plots stands for private land open to sportsmen, a walk-in access program that you can see in both North and South

Dakota. It's a really cool program and one of the many positive effects that pheasants have on a landscape, which we're going to dive into much more detail on, but before that, we need to hear one more hunt. What direction? Now I'm in South Dakota, and once again, I'm walking across a prairie with my dog, only this time I have my wife Lacey hunting with me. Lacey's first time fessent hunting was last year in 2024, and she liked it, so in November of 2025, she wanted to give it another go. This time instead of hunting plots, we're hunting a piece of path property, P-A-T-H, which stands for Public Access to Habitat, another public hunting access program brought about in part by the presence of pheasants on our landscape.

We're going to learn a lot more about this stuff later, but it's important we get to experience this part of it first. Hrister, rooster, rooster. Heck yes. Stay ready, stay ready. Knox has it. Good boy. Come here, Bob. Knox here.

Nice, Lacey. Public land pheasants, they are not a walk in the park, but we stuck with it and managed to kill a few. Makes you wish you had one more day when you hear all that. Well, I think Lacey needs a foot massage. Are you offering? No. I was like, this is new.

I think Knox needs some water and some food. food and but yeah hopefully I've enjoyed tagging along we've walked a lot and uh managed to have a little bit of success so yeah proud of you thank you did good thanks for taking me proud of you too man you're a good boy man those are some fun times and if an ounce of the fun that i have on these trips make it through the speakers and into your ear drums i'll be satisfied but as always let's zoom out on this. So far, all we've covered is that pheasants are non-native wildlife. And hopefully, from the hunt audio, y'all just heard, you've gathered that they are a right smart of fun to go and hunt. But there's a much, much bigger story here. One that I dare say will leave you rather

mind-blown at the history of it and the vast effects that this bird has made on the North American landscape. However, I'm not going to be the one to tell it to you. My name is Jared Wickland, director of communications for pheasants forever and quail forever on a national level. So I oversee all of our press releases, story information, you know, that's going out on our website and to news sources. I do a lot of podcasts and interviews. I work on National Fesson Fest and Quail Classic, sort of our big annual convention that travels around the country.

I do a lot of different things to support our wildlife habitat conservation work and basically tell the story of our volunteers in an organization that sort of rose from the ashes in 1982 when a group of pheasant owners saw the connection between upland habitat loss and declining pheasant populations and an organization was needed and that's how pheasants forever was formed and sort of the same way for quail forever in 2005. Jared is going to be the perfect person to share this crazy pheasant story with us. I want to kick this thing off by learning about how a bird that originally existed in Asia wound up in North America. You know, the history of pheasants goes really far back.

Actually, some of the earliest attempts to introduce pheasants were actually in the 1700s. For instance, there were accounts of George Washington introducing multiple species at his Mount Vernon estate, which I think is pretty cool. But the first successful attempt was the release of wildcat birds in the late 1800s. It was in 1881 in the Will Lammett Valley of Oregon by a guy named Judge Owen Denny. At that time, he was the consul general in Shanghai, which was like the top diplomatic post in China from the United States. And after he introduced pheasants, it was about 10 years later, really late 1800s, 1892, I think was the date when Oregon held its first pheasant season. And in that decade or so after releasing birds,

and they were released into a landscape with a lot of grass, a lot of small grains at the time, they harvested 50,000 pheasants that first year. I'm going to let Jared get back to his story, but I have to spend a little bit of time on this first key fact because I find it so fascinating. Owen Denny, a man appointed to the U.S. consul in 1877 in Tengen, China, would eventually become consul general.

Denny became fascinated with pheasants. wild pheasants that he saw and had personal experience with while in China. And that hatched the idea that they may do well in Oregon. And after two attempts of trapping wild pheasants in China, shipping them across the Pacific, 29 live wild birds made it safely to Portland, Oregon, and were released onto his brother's farm in Lynn County. They had immediate help from the state legislator by having them protected from harvest for 10 years. It is said that they took to the area so fast that they became, quote, pests. And there's an excerpt from a newspaper article written by a man named Don Holm that says,

Indeed, they became pest that drove off farmyard roosters. They ate their grain and even made off with their hens. Just think about that for a minute. A guy ends up appointed to a position in China. He catches a fascination for these birds, and while he's over there, he decides, hey, those may do well at my brother's farm. So he live traps them, puts them on a boat, ships them across the ocean, 29, just 29 of them make it back to Oregon, and somehow, some way, that leads to a pheasant population so healthy that my wife and I can go and hunt them on publicly accessible

ground in the Dakotas and find success. Crazy. Okay, I'll shut up now. Back to you, Jared. The birds just took to the landscape at the time, which was a lot of grass and small grains, which pheasants at that time really took to. So after they had their first pheasant season, there was a lot of wildcat fescents. So they called them the sort of F1 generation where people were taking them and distributing

to other landscapes throughout the United States, like the South Dakota's, the Minnesotas, some of those. And other introductions followed over the next couple decades. And by the 1930s, pheasants were pretty darn near established coast to coast across America. Like states like Pennsylvania, New York, some of these eastern states that used to have this very large culture of pheasant hunting. They've lost so much grass in that time that, you know, those populations aren't what they once were.

But you've got states out east that were also shooting over a million birds per year for a lot of years in a row. So it's like this cultural phenomenon, I think, that once pheasants took hold, they went from a non-native introduced species to this iconic form of wildlife that spread through out the western states, the Great Plains, and then through the eastern coast as well. Iconic form of wildlife. I want to ask Jared more about that,

but first, there's one small Easter egg of information in there that I just can't let slide by. If you recall, Jared said that after the first successful pheasant hunt in 1892, it became a popular practice to catch wild pheasants and release them into other areas of the country, such as the Dakotas and Minnesota. And in the following years, this led to them being introduced, or at least attempted to being introduced, in the rest of the country.

So let's think back to the Fannie Cook episode, one of my favorite episodes that we've done so far. You should go back and listen to it if you haven't already. In Ms. Cook's episode, we make mention of a game status report that was written by Aldo Lupold in 1929, about the state of Mississippi. And in that report, Lupold says, quote, Fescents have been tried, but so far failed. It's likely not possible to introduce them. So when Jared says that they had been attempted across much of the country, he means it. I mean, think about it.

When you think about pheasant country today, does Mississippi come to anyone's mind? My guess would be no. But hey, we tried. Even today, though, it's not that far off where, you know, you've got wild pheasant populations that go all the way down, you know, Oklahoma, Texas. I mean, as far as Mississippi goes, you're not that far off base from where wild populations currently have taken hold. There's information out there talking about like having enough calcium and other minerals in the dirt that allows for pheasant eggs to form the right way. There's certain areas of the country where pheasants do really well and other areas where they

struggle and sometimes soil types can play into that and the amount of nutrients that they have in order for pheasant eggs to make it, which I find a little bit interesting. Interesting stuff, Jared. But now I want to focus in on that iconic form of wildlife title that the pheasants have earned. Most commonly, wildlife species don't just get handed that title. They have to do something to earn it. And what I learned in the making of this episode is that pheasants did quite a few things to earn that title. The ringneck pheasant is the official state bird of South Dakota. You ever seen the South Dakota quarter at All Lake? Yeah. So the back of the quarter is a rooster pheasant that is flying over Mount Rushmore.

Like they, they love their pheasants so much and revere it so much that they minted it on the back of their state quarter, which I think is pretty cool. I always thought it would be awesome if the eyes of, you know, Mount Rushmore and the presidents were sort of looking up, you know, and shouting rooster while that thing's going over. But take a look at some quarters sometime as you're going through a change bucket in your house and just look for this, look for the South Dakota quarter. I think it speaks to pheasant hunters and the culture. and especially in a place like the pheasant capital of South Dakota.

But I think one of the most fascinating stories surrounding the ringneck pheasant is their place in American history as part of World War II, particularly in a place like South Dakota. In 1943 at the height of the war, the Red Cross and the United Service organization's canteen at the Milwaukee Depot in Aberdeen had a well-known slogan. And at that time, it was a world standout for a handout. They offered free lunch and hospitality to more than a half million service men and women during nearly three years of operation during World War II. In December of 1943, farmers brought pheasants to the canteen workers and the pheasant salad sandwich became a significant part of the menu. And that's kind of where this pheasant sandwich has kicked off from. It's finely chopped, cooked pheasant, hard-boiled eggs are in there, I believe, onion, a few other things. But there were so many pheasants in South Dakota at that time that pheasant hunts were organized to keep that canteen supplied with South Dakota state bird.

And they were really plentiful. At that time in 1943, they had a pre-hunt population of 11 million birds, which is sort of mind-blowing, considering right now you think the population I think they're looking at is. 16 to 18 million nationwide and 11 million pheasants in 1943 just in South Dakota. So for those that might still travel to the state to take part in their heritage and their culture of pheasant hunting, the Aberdeen Convention and Visitors Bureau actually still has pheasant sandwiches made. And for those that are coming in at the airport, the depot, I think, has turned more into sort of a historical site now, but those pheasant sandwiches are still handed out. So I thought that's kind of a cool place in American history in World War II, given

pheasant sandwiches, the servicemen and women. That's a fantastic story. Yeah, it's pretty neat. And they're delicious, too. I've had them before. We've been up there for, you know, media events surrounding sort of the, some of the public land stuff that we've done. And a couple of the lunches we've had up there, they really like to showcase the pheasant salad

sandwiches, which is awesome. Another great way to make them. Yeah. So I would say, and this is my opinion, and I'm just talking about North American wildlife fishery stuff. Yep. Most of the time when you hear the term non-native wildlife, whether they're talking about a bird, whether they're talking about a mammal, whether they're talking about a fish, it's brought up with a negative connotation. Yeah. Now, take that a step even further. Most of the time when you hear non-native wildlife and they're being, introduced somewhere or they're being, you know, transplanted from one area to another, even more so skewed towards that's normally brought about with a negative connotation. This is like an obvious example here, but like wild hogs, a non-native, very destructive

wildlife. We know they're destructive. To this day, wildlife departments have crazy issues with folks trying to sneak around and live haul them and turn them loose because they want to hunt them. Yep. How in the world, it's so, like, fascinating to me that you have a bird in a ringneck pheasant that took hold in much of the North American landscape and was not only accepted into our culture, but so much so that it's the state bird of South Dakota, that it's on a

quarter, that, you know, you're getting fed pheasant sandwiches when you get off an air, How does a bird that is not a native wildlife, how does it embed itself so well into our culture that it's like, yeah, we know you're not native, but come right in. You're one of us now. Like how did that happen? You know, before I answer that question first and foremost, I want to thank you for referring to the ringneck pheasant as a non-native species as opposed to invasive. We get a lot of people that come on certain feeds or podcasts, social media in general and refer to the pheasant as invasive. And like you said, that negative connotation, like they're having a negative impact on the landscape. And that's simply not true. I mean, you look at a place like South Dakota, they've got multi-hundred dollar or million dollar industry built around pheasants in the farm bill now and the conservation reserve program that pays landowners to put grass on the landscape or conserve resources. I think the pheasant and plenty of other species out there, but the pheasant is one of them that basically has helped with putting sort of that wildlife. distinction into the farm bill as far as grass. It's like this strategic grassland reserve. So they're not native species. They're not invasive. And they've become sort of this icon of the Midwest and Great Plains. And I'll throw this out there and people can disagree with me. But to some

degree, pheasins have become a colorful indicator of environmental health across the region. When we have a lot of buffers and we have a lot of grass on the landscape, when we have good weather too that makes a ton of pheasants and other wildlife they promote pollinators and a lot of the work that we do surrounds pollinators which makes for wonderful pheasant habitat it creates clean water creates clean air i mean there's just there's a lot of environmental benefits that come with managing for the ringneck pheasant so yeah to your point i'm fine calling them sort of this non non native species invasive um you can throw that out i think that's garbage but they've really turned into this icon of the Midwest and Great Plains and one of the reasons why they're called the King of Gamebirds.

Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called Prime Cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods,

they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out prime cuts at Phelps game calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut

is an easy-to-use cut for beginning calls. who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Allow me to break down for you, what I think is a fast track for gaining the title of iconic wildlife. Number one, prove to be of high cultural value. Fescents accomplish this with the many hunting opportunities they created, as well as a few standout instances like the pheasant sandwich story that took place during World War II.

Number two, prove that your existence on the landscape is beneficial, both for you, for humans, for other wildlife species, and for wildlife habitats. Fesits have done this in a lot of ways. One of the most notable ways is becoming so beloved that they made it into the farm-built talk. And lastly, and this one is quite a feat, but becomes so popular that you have a large conservation organization built completely around you. Let's pause and think about this one for a minute. Out of all the big conservation organizations out there that you know,

The National Wild Turkey Federation, Ducks Unlimited, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, for example, all of which I'm a big supporter of. But those are all native wildlife. How many conservation organizations built around non-native wildlife can you list off? You ever hear of a Wild Hog Forever Federation? If you do, let me know. I mean, seriously, let me know because someone would need to put a stop to that. But for real, think about that.

It's quite a feat accomplished by a small, brightly colored Asian bird, right? You know, from the beginning of time when pheasants Forever was created in 1982 and Dennis Anderson at the time, who still writes for the Minnesota Star Tribune right now, basically wrote an article talking about how, you know, we've lost a lot of habitat on the landscape. And he begged the question, have he ever seen a pheasant or other wildlife, freeze the death on the side of the road during a harsh winter when there's no habitat available? And that's really sort of what sparked this generation of pheasant hunters. and creating pheasants forever and our volunteers to basically go out and do good things for the bird, whether it's habitat, whether it's public access, which inevitably leads to habitat. There's a lot of different birds, I think, that you can work a bird dog on. Fescent to me is just sort of the upper

echelon of why people follow a bird dog around, especially. And the landscapes that they live into are so varying everything from, you know, we talked about northeast Iowa at the beginning of this. sort of that driftless region to sort of these stark rolling landscapes of just grass as far as you can see. They live in tall grass, prairie, mixed grass prairie, and to some degree, pheasants can still be found from coast to coast, which is why it makes them such valuable wildlife for folks to go out and chase. Have you all ever heard the phrase canary in the coal mine? If you haven't, it basically means an indicator for danger or failure. Well, I think we should coin our own. From now on, instead of saying canary in the coal mine, I'm going to say

pheasant on the roadside, which honestly wouldn't really work because you see pheasants standing on road sides, even in areas where there is good habitat. But the point I'm attempting to make here is that pheasants became a countrywide indicator for habitat health, which is one of the main

reasons pheasants forever was formed, and also one of the reasons pheasants forever and quell forever is known as the habitat organization. And the beauty of that is, even if an individual has a singular goal of creating more habitats for pheasants, that has compounding effects. Remember the ecological maxim we learned a few episodes back.

You can never just do one thing. Actions have consequences and ripple effects, and creating more habitats for pheasants, in turn, creates more habitats and recreational opportunities for a lot of other things. Going back to our history in 1982, that group of pheasant hunters saw the connection between upland habitat loss and declining pheasant populations decided that an organization was needed, and that's how pheasants forever was formed. In 2005, Quail Forever sort of followed that model as well due to declining numbers, and Fessence Forever and Quill Forever together quickly garnered its reputation as the Habitat Organization,

and that's a tagline that we still use today. I use it just about every day in the writing that I do because I love it so much. But, you know, our mission has conserved pheasants, quail, another wildlife, through Habitians, improvement, public access, education, and conservation advocacy. And, you know, I think everybody's familiar with all the wonderful conservation groups out there, the Ducks Unlimited, the National Wild Turkey Federation, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, all these other ones. And we work with a lot of them on combined projects.

But Fessons Forever and Quill Forever, I think, is unique in that 100% of the decision-making control over the funds raised by local volunteers. So we've got 765 chapters right now throughout the United States in every state right now, which is pretty cool. But the decision of how to use those funds stays local with a chapter. So they use those for wildlife habitat conservation efforts in their own communities. And then we also have a number of different awesome programs and initiatives, whether it's the advocacy side and supporting what we do in Washington, D.C., because the stroke of a pen can change things there.

and as people know in a very short amount of time to our path program, which is our public access to habitat program that was formed a year and a half ago after some trial and error. And that program has really grown to be sort of a mainstay. We still do land acquisitions and our Build a Wildlife Area program. We've conserved 243,000 acres of permanent land acquisition here since 1982, which is awesome. If you hunt the outside of those, just the outside of those,

Just the outside of those acres would take you all the way from mid-Canada down through mid-Mexico. But the new path program is unique in that we provide an extra incentive to landowners that maybe want to get into some type of Conservation Reserve program enrollment, but that extra incentive is used for walk and access. We combine it with state access programs, and we've had a lot of success doing it. In the last year and a half now, we've got about 130,000 extra acres on the landscape for bird hunters and their bird dogs to roam to go out and enjoy and to grow wildlife. And in a lot of cases, every single contract that we have through Path protects that property for, you know, whether it's five years or 10 years that the landowner signs up for.

In most cases, there's restrictions on what a landowner can do on those acres. It is meant so that when somebody shows up to a path enrollment right now, you're not showing up to something that's been hate or great. raised off, you're showing up to an awesome wildlife factory that is going to have birds on it when you hunt it. And we've seen that time and time again from people that have anecdotal stories like, wow, this is an awesome program. And I'm glad I found this path sign on this property. A final point that I want to point out with pheasants is in most other circles, and this is just more anecdotal than like fact-based or science or anything. You could take turkeys. You could take

turkeys, you could take deer, ducks. You could take almost any other, you know, game that we hunt. You could take it all the way down to like the single or individual level where guys are like, yeah, I'm not telling you where I'm going. Or you take it to the state level and everyone's like, yeah, go hunt turkeys, deer, just don't come to my state and do it. Or man, we got too many non-residents. And I'm not down, like, again, I'm not down on the other side of it by any means because like, Lord knows, I would probably give you my bank account information before I told you where my turkey, you know, my turkey spots were. But peasant hunting might be the most welcoming style of hunting that I've ever come in contact with. I think you're on to something there. There's like this community aspect of pheasant. Now, I love going out by myself and just my bird dog and tracking down a wily rooster and, you know, having it retrieved a hand. That's awesome.

But there's a community aspect of hunting with friends, hunting with family. We just had a lot of openers here the past couple weeks. This past weekend was Iowa, which I was set to shoot upwards of 750,000 roosters this year. It's going to be their best, probably their best pheasant season in the past 25 years. You know, South Dakota, Minnesota, both had wonderful winners. They had huge increases in birds and sort of those opening day photos that you see of people smiling.

you know, the kids holding roosters and a lot of limits were taken. And that's not necessarily what it's about. But in modern day glory days, I think kind of we're going through a little bit of that right now. The last time we saw that was probably around 2007, 2008, before the farm bill flipped over and we lost a lot of acres in a lot of states. I mean, those were modern day highs at that time that were right in line with how many acres of grass were on the landscape. We're seeing some good things this year. and you know access is a fine line I think a lot of these states are inviting South Dakota North Dakota Minnesota Iowa I mean at Kansas Nebraska I mean everybody wants you to come out and

experience pheasant hunting or quail hunting or any type of upland hunting in those states and you know I take a little bit of crap from time to time because as the PR guy I really like to talk about our access successes as well like when we do a thousand acre land acquisition I want people to know about it. But then there's also that blowback right. Like, oh, looks like you guys screwed that one up, you know, and it's like, well, not really. It's permanently protected. There's always going to be pheasants there. Like here's a, here's a for instance for you. We just did a, a path enrollment in South Dakota that was 32,000 acres. You can find it pretty easy using onyx and some of those layers. But like 32,000 acres, like you just aren't going to go out there with five, six guys and

walk that in a day or two days or two weeks. Like we're trying to enroll extremely large parcels. And when we do things like that, I really like to sort of tell the story like, hey, this is pheasants forever, our local chapters and willing landowners providing access for you to go out and enjoy the spaces where bird dogs love to roam. And we're going to continue doing those types of things. But I think you're right. For the most part, it's a little bit different than deer hunting or turkey hunting where

people are like, hey, come on out. we've got this public land and it's full of birds this year for your enjoyment. Exactly. But with like presents, it's like, come on, man. Yeah, I'll show you. It's a completely different vibe. It's so interesting to me, like that this bird has, this bird is an outlier in so many ways. Like, it's gotten adopted by our country, pretty much.

And it conjures up like a completely different attitude within its hunting community that we really don't see anywhere else. Yep. And, you know, I think pheasants forever and coil forever as a conservation group is unique right now in that we're utilizing. We're updating our strategic plan. We're using the most up-to-date science that's out there to determine like, hey, if we're going to hold on to these pheasant populations and grow them in these certain areas, like where are we seeing the biggest increases? Why are we seeing those increases? You know, when we put public lands on the landscape, it's not like, oh, there's 30 acres. Let's go out and buy it. It's strategic, right? We're creating complex. is in big areas that can produce a lot of wildlife. And you pointed to it earlier, it's not just pheasants. Like the things that we do from a grassland standpoint are wonderful for pollinators, for songbirds, huge betting areas for deer. One of my favorite things to do, especially in Northeast Iowa when I was going to school there, was deer hunt, huge grasslands surrounded by woods and just like trying to figure out

the puzzle of like where these deer are traveling. like they're going to go and travel through, you know, five, six foot tall Indian grass or big blue stem and trying to sort of figure out that puzzle. And then when it all comes together and you go out and arrow a big one, it's gratifying to figure that out and know that like, hey, those grasslands are there for a reason and all wildlife are using them. It's not just not just upland birds. If y'all have followed along with this show since the beginning, then you probably know by now that one of the main factors that we focus on is human impact. on wildlife and wild places. And to be honest, most of the time when we talk about this, we're talking about negative impacts.

Not because we go looking for the negatives, but rather it just seems to be more skewed that direction. That's why I want to make sure that whenever we come across positive human impact on wildlife, by golly, we celebrate it, because it's worth celebrating. More wildlife and more wildlife habitat is good for everything and everyone. One, hard stop, big facts, the simple truth. And although there is complexity when we start talking about the effects of non-native wildlife on the North American landscape, the ringnecked pheasant is in a class all its own. I want to give Jared a chance to wrap up this conversation with some final thoughts before we close this out.

It benefited wildlife. I think it's benefited rural communities as well, farmers and ranchers. I mean, a lot of the work that we do, we do a ton of public lands work for as much. what's public lands work as we do. We've got a whole contingent of biologists that work on private lands, which is where a lot of pheasants and other wildlife are made in this country. And the grass that we help landowners put down, I mean, those are strategic reserves, not just for wildlife,

but for like the cattle industry as well when we do have bad years and years of drought. So there's a saying out there like, what's good for the bird is good for the herd. And it's absolutely true. We can grow wildlife and have all the cattle and corn and things that we want while still mass-producing wildlife and having clean water and environmental services that, you know, all Americans enjoy, which I think is really important. I want to thank all of you for listening to Backwoods University, as well as bear grease in this country life. It means a whole lot to all of us. If you like this episode, share it with somebody

this week. Heck, here's a good idea. Share it with the last person you saw miss a pheasant. I'm sure they'll appreciate the sentiment. And stick around, because if this podcast was a pheasant We've got a few in the vest, but the dog just started acting birdie again. There's a whole lot more on the way. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest.

It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track. record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my

cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out prime cuts at phelps game calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy to

use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.