LeFusil, since I lived in Iowa and have chased pheasants here for the last 26 seasons I will throw in my 2 cents and say it was "favorable" conditions, definitely not brome. Birds were plentiful everywhere compared to those same places now. Many of those areas had little brome then and birds living in wetlands and other non-brome habitats were equally in greater abundance as birds in brome-grass dominated landscapes.
In fact, during those years, winters were often brutal compared to what we see now, but springs were better for certain.
Certainly, the overall loss of CRP - especially in the large blocks of it, and conversion of fields of CRP to strip habitat, have hurt a lot but conversion of grasslands of any type from C3 dominance (mostly introduced cool-season grasses) to C4 species (warm-season, tall-grass, native species) has probably been a minor help rather than a hindrance.
It is interesting to note that turkeys over this interval have flourished greatly. Wet spring don't seem to get them down like some other groundnesting birds.
Perhaps the least understood and certainly underappreciated factor may be the general loss of small wildlife in general from agricultural and even non-agricultural landscapes. Many farmers have noticed and commented on the overall reduction of insects of all types. Fewer butterflies, but also fewer bees, beetles etc etc over the last decade or so. Recently, a paper was published in PLOS1 (an academic journal) that as much as 75% of insect life in general has disappeared from Germany in the last 25 yrs. Many of my colleagues (biologists of many stripes) have noticed really pronounced declines in passerine birds among other species at their field sites where they don't necessarily study the birds, but are places where they regularly visit and have reason to notice such trends. Indeed, I no longer see the butterfly or bird migrations on my own rural property that I saw even 15 yrs ago. The exact nature of these changes is hard to pin down. Chemical agriculture is frequently suspected and with good reason, but it is hard to know. Certainly, however, all is not well out there and losses of insects on the scale of what has been described in other places would certainly impact chick rearing by pheasants.
I wonder and doubt if we will ever get back to the boom years of pheasant hunting again. Illinois shows no sign of every returning to a pheasant producing state again. I suspect Iowa is following Illinois lead.
![[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]](https://i.imgur.com/qclHjMQ.jpg)
