We use our put-and-take pheasant hunts to get them out in a hunting situation. Is there a difference, though? Birds can flush and fly. We make sure that's the case. In a 3-acre pen a deer simply cannot escape. Three acres is not big enough. That's not reasonable chase. Some of our hunting fields are 10 or 20 acres. You can have an excellent hunting experience and you're not going to be able to kill all the birds. I think there's a huge difference, even if you're using pen-raised birds. As long as there's habitat, it can truly be called hunting. That's not the case with a 3- or 5-acre pen.

SMALL GAME
G&F: What happened with the proposed limit reduction on grouse?

Lange: It wasn't approved. There won't be any season changes. That was another situation where the Natural Resources Commission decided in favor of hunter interests. But we think as biologists it was needed. There are a lot of areas in south-central Indiana where the populations are so low that they probably can't sustain a season into late winter. That's all we were attempting to do, which was to eliminate some of the late-winter hunting.

G&F: What effect would that have had?

Lange: There was not going to be a huge effect. We never claimed that there would be. Hunting during the winter takes birds out of the population that would be reproducing next spring. At the same time, we're trying to call attention to what some of the problems are with grouse habitat. Old-growth forests are causing the wrong habitat for grouse. We wouldn't begin to recommend that you harvest it all, but you certainly need a mixture of different forests. Even songbird populations require that as well.

G&F: Has anything been done to bring back the rabbit population?

Lange: Rabbit and quail habitat are the same. You have to have early succession vegetative habitat. It can't be plowed, it can't be paved and it can't be a wood lot that has large trees all the way up to the first row of corn and soybeans. That won't produce the right habitat.

MISCELLANEOUS
G&F: The previous year, the state purchased land to add onto Morgan State Forest. There's been talk about purchasing Goose Pond. If that were achieved, would it be a fish and wildlife area (FWA)? And are there any other land acquisitions on the horizon?

Lange: For Goose Pond, we're still negotiating. But with the new administration, I don't know. I know negotiations are still occurring. We've been able to pull together some funding. Whether the new administration would be willing to spend the money will be something we'll soon see. The plan now is to make it a FWA, though it probably won't be a traditional FWA. There will some other management going on there over time. We'd want to create facilities for people to come and look at the waterfowl like the cranes at Jasper-Pulaski FWA. We'd want to manage it for all different types of wildlife, not just waterfowl.

Elsewhere, we just added a development agreement for Fairbanks Landing that creates another 8,000 acres of wildlife habitat along the Wabash River through an agreement with the power company that owns the land. It creates additional access to the river. It's a great addition.

G&F: Have there been any setbacks in getting the electronic license system up and running?

Lange: It appears to be percolating right along. We were able to obtain some additional vendors that weren't vendors before. By the time this article is published, we should be fully operational.

G&F: Thank you, Chief Lange, for your candid comments and your time.