WHITEWATER — Judy Davis wasn't born yesterday.

But she remembers it well enough. Like so many of her Western Slope neighbors settled at the foot of the Grand Mesa and along the Gunnison River corridor, the lifelong rancher from Mesa County readily recalls the past with the gleam of a fisherman telling you how you should have been here, oh, about 30 years ago yesterday.

"We've always had pheasants, since the '70s," said Davis, who operates the 1,200-acre Broken Spoke Game Ranch (970-241-3949) alongside her husband, Cliff. "Back in the '80s, we caught the game warden here hunting pheasants. I was going to have his job, but Cliff said, 'Oh, just call us if you ever want to come in to hunt.' "

That was long before Broken Spoke became one of a handful of private game preserves offering small game hunters on the West Slope temporary relief for their current frustrations in pursuit of ring-neck pheasants, the state's most popular "upland" game bird. That was when "it used to be good," as so many locals will tell you, when wild birds thrived in enough areas that Colorado Parks and Wildlife still recognizes a few pockets of pheasant habitat on the range map in its annual small game brochure. Undoubtedly that former game warden was just doing some research.

These days, the story is significantly different, even though a relief map or even a drive through the agricultural corridor that brings us Olathe sweet corn, heaps of alfalfa and hay might lead the casual observer to think otherwise. With an elevation roughly on par with the high plains surrounding Denver, arguably milder winters and enough apparent food sources to sustain them, it would seem that western Colorado has all the elements required to maintain a huntable pheasant population.

All that's missing is the pheasants.

"It is brutal," said Cody Powell, a Grand Junction native who attempted to start a Western Slope chapter of Pheasants Forever back in 2009. "I don't put too many birds on the dinner table each year, but it ain't for lack of trying."

Like other longtime locals, Powell will tell you that there are still some wild birds that survive in the area. But it's nothing like it was 30 years ago, when the hunting was good enough to get excited about, from Montrose and Delta on down to Fruita and Loma.

The sign speaks for itself at the 1,200 acre Broken Spoke Game Ranch near Whitewater.
The sign speaks for itself at the 1,200 acre Broken Spoke Game Ranch near Whitewater. (Scott Willoughby, The Denver Post)

Most of the pheasants that westerners see these days are pen-raised escapees from places such as Broken Spoke Ranch, Black Canyon Wing and Clay near Delta, Four Directions Upland Game Club in Hotchkiss or the higher-end lodges like Kessler Canyon and the High Lonesome Ranch on the other side of the mesa in DeBeque. Pheasants that aren't bagged by hunters, though, are generally considered coyote chow or hawk bait.

So what happened? Reasoning for the decline in pheasants ranges from overpopulation, fragmentation, insecticides and increased predation, but CPW small game manager Ed Gorman believes the problem ultimately amounts to crop rotations that no longer favor pheasant nesting cycles.

"What's really missing over there — and if you're missing this, you're missing everything — is that there are almost no large, undisturbed nesting habitat blocks where birds can successfully nest and raise their young," Gorman said. "What the locals told me was that when the pheasant hunting was really good, there was lots of barley in the Delta and Montrose area. Barley is similar to wheat, basically a grass that grows fast in the spring and in large fields that aren't harvested until August or September, leaving nesting areas undisturbed for a long period of time. The logic works. When the crop went away, the birds went away."

As a result, many of the bird hunters have gone away as well.

"I do my research, find landowners and ask nicely and try to scratch up a few birds that way," said Powell, who still believes that the local pheasant population can return with support from pen-raised birds. "But mostly I travel to the east slope and hunt the walk-in access areas as much as possible. It's a solid five hours of driving, but it's worth it to me."

And like many local pheasant fanatics, Powell isn't above taking his new Vizsla pup over to a preserve such as Broken Spoke to pay a reasonable $125 fee for a worthwhile hunting experience.

"We stay very busy. I buy 4,500 birds a year and go through them all between September and March," said Davis, who quit haying the irrigated property to focus on pheasant habitat a decade ago. "We think it's kind of nice that we're doing this because the people in Grand Junction and all the people in Mesa County get to use it. We think it's good hunting and the people that hunt think it's good hunting too."