With all the high visibility world, state and local issues of the new year, I decided to wait a couple of weeks before providing a look back at some of the highlights and challenges the North Dakota Game and Fish Department dealt with in 2017.
Game and Fish Deputy Director Scott Peterson covered a number of them in the recent January 2018 issue of North Dakota OUTDOORS magazine.
More wet than dry
As drought arrived on the heels of five or six years of rising water levels and increasing fish populations, Game and Fish Department personnel entered 2017 managing more than 425 fisheries.
Not surprisingly, many North Dakota fisheries lost water last year, but not all lakes were affected the same.
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In summer 2017, fisheries personnel stocked more than 12 million walleye fingerlings into 130-plus waters around the state, topping the previous high by more than 1 million fish.
North Dakota's roadside pheasant survey indicated total birds and number of broods were down considerably statewide from 2016.
The majority of the state dealt with extreme drought conditions during critical times for pheasant chicks, resulting in poor nesting and brood habitat and more than likely a less than ideal insect hatch.
The survey showed total pheasants were down 61 percent from last year.
2017 deer season
The department in 2017 made available 54,500 licenses to deer gun hunters.
The license total is much lower when compared to the years 2001 through 2011 when, thanks to plentiful wildlife habitat on the landscape and a string of mild winters, license totals stretched well beyond 100,000.
Yet, considering the number of deer gun licenses allocated to hunters the three previous seasons - 48,000 in 2014, 43,275 in 2015 and 49,000 in 2016 - the increase in 2017 continued a trend in the right direction.
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Sage grouse
Department personnel in spring moved 60 sage grouse - 40 females and 20 males - from southern Wyoming to Bowman County, with the hope they'd nest in southwestern North Dakota. Biologists believed that if some of the females initiated a nest, that would likely anchor them to North Dakota and in turn do the same for hatched young.
Aquatic nuisance species
While high water and strong flows made searching for zebra mussels in the Red River difficult, Game and Fish Department fisheries personnel did find just a few of the invasive mussels attached to a dock pulled from the river in Wahpeton, N.D.
Zebra mussels were first discovered in the Red River in 2015. Although it's uncertain how well established the population is in the river, fisheries biologists know the mussels pose a threat to other waters around the state.
Bighorn Sheep Licenses
The Game and Fish Department allocated five bighorn sheep licenses to hunters in 2017 after closing the season altogether in 2015 to assess the severity of a bacterial pneumonia outbreak in the population in western North Dakota.
That's just a short review of what made North Dakota outdoors news in 2017. More details are available on the Game and Fish Department website, gf.nd.gov
