# Where do they take cover?



## Old Hunter (Mar 8, 2002)

Where do pheasants roost in these tough winter conditions? The tree rows are packed with snow drifts that you can walk on. The carttail slough bottoms are plugged with 4 feet of snow with only the tops of the bull rushes sticking out. When it is -20 with a little wind you northern folks know how bitter cold it is. What do you think the birds use for cover that keeps them warm enough to survive?


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## g/o (Jul 13, 2004)

Old, In my neck of the woods they are in the cattails, they also hang around the shrubs I planted some years back. Lots of birds left and doing fine


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## buckseye (Dec 8, 2003)

Probably in sheltered farmsteads both abandoned and inhabited. Around here they come to the grain bins and feed lots.


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## wtrfowl14 (Dec 21, 2007)

Around here everything is snowed in also. But they are hanging around where you have a variety of trees where they can get out of the wind and berries on the trees (shrubs, evergreens and spruce trees) and especially where there is cattle, they like hanging out in them areas where they can get food from the cattle feed. I just wish they wouldn't feed out the berry trees so early in the season. I had a spot the had about a 1/2 acre of buffleberry shrubs and they gorged themselves on that in December and when I was in there on Xmas eve there was hardly any birds left has they ate all the berries and they were out digging in the snow trying to find food.


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## rowdie (Jan 19, 2005)

They are comming into town. I've even seen a couple come out of an old garage.


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## Old Hunter (Mar 8, 2002)

If g/o doesnt know I dont feel bad.I mean specifically.Most of the pheasants I see are by slough bottoms but as I mentioned these seem to be pretty full. I realize that they take different types of cover some into buildings, crawl in by bales,feedlots by cattle, whattever works . Most of the examples I can come up with are not the norm for the bulk of the birds. I can not believe that a pheasant has the body mass,feathers or stamina to spend the night in trees, shrubs, or like cover when it is -20 with a 20 mpn wind. You will see them out in these conditions in the daytime but they are feeding,moving,creating body heat.The only way I can understand the majority of them surviving is by getting under the snow pack to utilize the igloo effect.I guess its time to get out the snowshoes and look at those slough bottoms and see if they are crawling down into the cattails. Its driven me nuts I gotta find out where they roost at night.


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## omegax (Oct 25, 2006)

In some of the bigger sloughs the north side will be packed with snow, and probably uninhabitable to the birds, but the south side will be ok. I'd wager that the birds are in the really big sloughs that aren't completely drifted in and the tree belts.


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## Dak (Feb 28, 2005)

The ones around us are spending the nights in bushes...on one side of the drifts or the other depending the wind direction.


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## g/o (Jul 13, 2004)

Old, They huddle together, in small groups when really cold.


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