UGUIDE - Hunter - Pheasants Forever - Habitat Partnership
When you book a hunt with UGUIDE you are providing a lot of support for local pheasant habitat and also for the local economy. There are many landowners that would like to do more for pheasants but the farming and ranching business can be tough and doesn't afford much margins to allow landowners to "leave some for the birds". Those that do "leave some for the birds" don't realize that what they think they are doing in the name of conservation is not providing much bang for their buck.
Hunters on the other hand are finding it more challenging to find a high quality wild bird hunting experience at an affordable rate. Landowners that do have a strong desire to build habitat for wildlife cannot attract enough fee hunting business to make it worth their while to leave CRP in and also plant the most critical habitat of all in South Dakota....winter survival food-cover plots.
UGUIDE brings together the hunter-landowner issues in a partnership win-win model that is strictly habitat based. UGUIDE leans on 25 years of non-resident pheasant hunter experience and consults and advises landowners on habitat design that not only provides great wildlife conditions but also fabulous hunting conditions.
Other organizations and partnerships are also essential to creating the Fair Chase experience at UGUIDE Pheasant Camps. UGUIDE and Pheasants Forever partner together to bring food plot seed programs and conservation programs like CRP to local farmers properties across South Dakota. The highly successful Pheasants Forever Farm Bill Biologist role is responsible for bringing many acres of high quality conservation and pheasant habitat to the state of South Dakota and surrounding states. Find out more about the Pheasants Forever Farm Bill Biologist Program here.
UGUIDE is able to bring enough hunting funds to the table to allow the landowner to alter their farming and ranching practices to devote a significant portion of their land specifically to wildlife habitat. Without funds from hunters this is not possible. In many cases, funds from hunters now for the first time has created, in farmers, a reason for a conservation approach to their farming practices (even where government programs like CRP has not). On average as much as 50% of the gross income from fee hunting goes back into the ground in the form of pheasant habitat. Other operations like preserves and non-wild bird outfits have significant overhead costs due to buying and releasing pen raised birds. UGUIDE landowners are able to put this money back in the ground in support of sustainable conservation practices rather that perishable strains of pen raised birds.
