Rooster Road Trip ’13 Highlights Pheasants Forever’s Importance in Habitat’s Most Challenging Time
Pheasants Forever 10.24.13
Follow online hunt across 5 states in 5 days starting Monday, Oct. 28
Pheasants Forever’s Rooster Road Trip is ready to roll. This October 28th through November 1st, come along with a trio of Pheasants Forever hunters as they and their bird dogs hunt their way across five states in five days while hunting only public land. In this modern era of unprecedented upland habitat destruction, this year’s event focuses on the importance of aggressively continuing to create these public-land projects and paradises.
Once again, the Rooster Road Trip online event will visit lands that Pheasants Forever has played a significant role in opening up to public access; either through land purchase, restoration or legislation. The effort focuses on how important pheasant hunters who join Pheasants Forever as members are to creating and improving publicly accessible habitat. In fact, any follower who joins Pheasants Forever as a member online through the Rooster Road Trip webpage during the dates of the trip will receive an exclusive Browning Spur Neck Knife (shaped like a pheasant spur) and be entered to win a Browning Cynergy Feather 12 gauge shotgun (in addition to standard benefits of PF membership). The trip will start in North Dakota, followed by South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota.
“The Rooster Road Trip, now in its fourth year, has always been about showcasing public upland habitat and access. The availability of such places takes on even more importance in these challenging times for grasslands and wetlands,” says Anthony Hauck, Pheasants Forever’s Online Editor, “We’ve been losing pheasant habitat across the range, and consequently pheasant numbers have dropped. But now’s not the time to take up golf. We need hunter-conservationists to be more active than ever, more vocal about habitat-friendly policies and more supportive of local conservation efforts. The Rooster Road Trip will make stops in each state where Pheasants Forever chapters aren’t just hoping for times to change, they’re doing something about it.”
The easiest way to measure the success of upland habitat projects is bird encounters, and when Rooster Road Trip hunters do come across roosters, they hope to capture the action with the help of their bird dogs. With the unique “Dog’s Eye View Video” sponsored by Garmin (view the preview video here), a high-definition video camera will be mounted to either “Beau,” Andrew Vavra’s Labrador retriever, or “Annie,” Rehan Nana’s Red setter, during hunts on the trip. Vavra is a marketing specialist for Pheasants Forever, while Nana serves as the organization’s public relations specialist.
Rounding out the trip’s everyday participants will be “Sprig,” Hauck’s English cocker spaniel. Hauck, Vavra and Nana are employees of Pheasants Forever and responsible for the organization’s web content and online communications.
Follow Pheasants Forever’s Rooster Road Trip 2013 online at: Rooster Road Trip 2013 / Facebook / Twitter / YouTube
Rooster Road Trip 2013 sponsors include Browning, Garmin, Nebraska Game and Parks, North Dakota Tourism, Carlson’s Choke Tubes, Outdoor Channel and the Pheasants Forever Visa Card.
Pheasants Forever launched Quail Forever in August of 2005 to address the continuing loss of habitat suitable for quail and the subsequent quail population decline. Bobwhite population losses over the last 25 years range from 60 to 90 percent across the country. The reason for the quail population plunge is simple - massive losses of habitat suitable for quail. There are five major factors leading to the losses of quail habitat; intensified farming and forestry practices, succession of grassland ecosystems to forests, overwhelming presence of exotic grasses like fescue that choke out wildlife, and urban sprawl.
