I have no proof whatsoever, but I have hunted Iowa for pheasants for almost 50 years. I have seen the bad times when livestock ate up to each fence post, the good times with Soil Bank in the 60s and some pretty good times with the government sponsored "diverted acres" a couple of decades ago. We still have a smaller form of the CRP program in place, but in the last 10 years or so I have seen the Iowa pheasant populations decline from what they were. The habitat still looked good. I think those same declining years coincided with the increasing use of genetically altered seeds such as corn. Monsanto and the Roundup Ready products come to mind. Is it possible that these genetically altered seeds, which are designed to be bad for bugs, and other crop pests, are also not conducive to good pheasant and quail populations ? Who "knows" anything about such ?
