Volume 45, Number 1,
September 1998:
Greater Prairie Chicken Management

Text-only version

ISSUE HOME PAGE

ABOUT THIS ISSUE
- about KSN
- about the author

IN THIS ISSUE
- introduction
- what is a greater prairie chicken?
- habitat
- managing habitat
- booming grounds
- booming ground survey
- nesting
- broods
- fall and winter habitat
- summary
- decreasers/increasers/ invaders
- jump shooting/pass shooting
- further reading

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Greater Prairie Chicken Management
by Gerald J. Horak and Roger D. Applegate

FALL AND WINTER HABITAT
Good nesting and brood cover also serves as the habitat for fall and winter activities. Generally, prairie chickens utilize rangeland habitat consisting of clump-type grasses, which provide areas of sparse vegetation surrounded by taller grasses. This habitat, averaging 16 centimeters (6 inches) tall, provides vegetation easy to walk through and dense and high enough for concealment.

Roosting areas must be extensive enough to accommodate entire flocks. When a flock moves to a roost site, individuals locate acceptable roost sites a short distance from other birds. Flocks will locate a roosting site and use this area every night but will leave and relocate if disturbed.

Daytime loafing areas are not as confining as night roosts. Habitat needs vary depending on weather conditions. On cold, windy days, heavier cover is utilized while on warmer days thinner, shorter cover is used. Loafing sites often change from day to day because prairie chickens move around searching out food items like green grass, forb seeds, and available insects. In average winters, prairie chickens can survive in open rangeland. However, during times of extended periods of snow cover and cold temperatures, harvested agricultural grain fields are necessary as a supplementary food source.

Providing feed fields for prairie chickens can be an important management tool. These fields serve as a readily available source of high protein foods, and prairie chickens use these fields traditionally. Field feeding starts in October and continues into March. Although field feeding activity is sporadic and may not occur daily, it is generally more consistent during the fall and winter with birds normally coming to grain fields in early morning and late afternoon. During the hunting season, hunters take advantage of this movement and pass shoot birds as they fly to feed. Jump shooting can be effective in September, but as fall progresses, flock size increases making it difficult to get within range for jump shooting. After September, pass shooting is the primary prairie chicken hunting method.

Ideally, grain fields should be in open areas with a minimum size of six hectares (15 acres). Large files containing a variety of row crops with strips of wheat will get the most use. The favored grain of prairie chickens is soybeans, with corn and sorghum also highly preferred. Wheat fields are also used for food during the fall and winter, providing a source of green vegetation. Feeding areas should be close to large pastures to provide good loafing and roosting areas.