46 Nebraskaland • April 2022
had birds boiling out of Soil Bank
fi elds by the hundreds in the 1960s.
When Conservation Reserve Program
enrollment peaked in the mid-1990s,
everyone remembers the big hunter
breakfasts and town fundraisers on
opening weekend and, if you didn't
have your limit by noon on the fi rst
day, then "Buddy, your gun barrel must
be bent."
Most people age 60 or older can
remember a time when eastern
Nebraska still grew wheat, oats and
other small grains, and grass pastures
were more common. Most people age
40 and older can recall the time before
weeds in ag fi elds were controlled
with chemicals. Today's landscape
is diff erent. Without small grains in
cropping rotations, we lose nesting
potential, and without weeds, high
quality brood-rearing areas are fewer
and farther between.
CRP and Bird Numbers
Before we lost these landscape
features, all we had to do was add
winter cover to meet the birds'
survival needs. Furthermore, we could
also create places where we knew
birds would want to be throughout the
hunting season. In today's landscape,
our responsibilities have grown from
simply getting birds through the
winter. Today, we also need to provide
places for hens to be productive
nesters and places where broods can
successfully forage for insects. And we
have to do all of it on far fewer acres.
The Conservation Reserve Program,
initially created in the 1985 Farm Bill
to reduce soil erosion, has always
been a great tool to put winter cover
on the landscape. CRP has since
adopted wildlife benefi t as one of
its program objectives, and many
of today's enrollments are tailored
toward providing quality habitats. In
Nebraska, starting in 2008, a special
CRP practice called State Acres for
Wildlife Enhancement (SAFE) was
designed to meet all the life cycle
A young-of-the-year ring-necked pheasant near a cornfi eld in Scotts Bluff County.
JUSTIN HAAG, NEBRASKALAND
The Goc family fi rst and foremost hunted ducks. The author (right), age 11 or 12,
hunting waterfowl on the Platte River with her father Tom, little brother Colton,
family friend Terry Kostinec and springer spaniel Wiley circa 1998.
COURTESY TOM GOC
