Bad Weather Cuts Number Of Hunters

Poor weather conditions cut hunting pressure drastically yesterday in Nez Perce County pheasant hunting areas compared with that of Saturday’s opening day.

Gene DeReus, bird biologist for the Idaho Fish & Game Dep’t, said last night that check stations were manned on Tom Beall and at Garden Gulch and counted 78 hunters with 60 birds, an average of .8 birds per hunter. The average hunting time for bird was four hours and only three hunters were checked who got their limit of three.

On opening day, 382 hunters were checked at the two stations plus one in Tammany, Saturday’s bag was 354 pheasants.

DeReus said it would not be proper to compare yesterday’s hunting results with other second days of recent years because the weather this year was far worse than in the other years.

The checkers counted 58 hunters with 43 birds on Tom Beall and 20 hunters with 17 birds at Garden Gulch. The check stations closed at 2 p.m., earlier than planned because of the weather and the scarcity of hunters.

This story was published in the Oct. 15, 1962, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.