Wirehair pup vs montana Phesant,,,,

[2ski]

though a lot of people skipped opening weekend and came a week later for some reason.

Its because the Cats had a home game opening weekend of pheasant. That's why I didn't go out at all opening weekend for pheasants....you know people are okay with skipping griz games for hunting, but not Cat games....lol

 

[Hunting Wife]

Hunting Wife- What causing the shrinking of CRP acres? Commodity prices? Contract prices upon re-enrollment? We see very little whole field CRP here in IN, especially for grass. A few small fields will be in trees through CRP as it pays a bit better and is a longer contract. CRP prices just aren't close enough to what they can make on grain or even ag-leasing. Lots of filter strips, grassed waterways, etc, as that fits in better with the operations here.

People were definitely encouraged not to re-enroll by high crop prices a few years ago, though wheat is now in a slump. But the biggest driver is the acreage cap put on the program by Congress. There are currently more people applying than there are acres available to be enrolled under the cap.

This article has some relatively recent numbers on CRP acres.
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/local/2016/10/31/conservation-reserve-program-cuts-benefit-iowa-hurt-montana/93097760/

It used to be common practice in Montana to leave field edges and swales unplanted, leave buffer strips and old shelterbelts in place, etc but the last few years those are kind of going by the wayside as more people turn to this clean farming idea. So historically those grass strips and such weren't a big part of the program here. The focus was more on "fields" that really never should have been fields. There are a lot of people here who make more off the insurance than they ever will off the yield on certain pieces of ground. To those people, CRP is still attractive even at the low rates.

 

[1_pointer]

Hunting Wife- Thanks for the info. CRP is a wide ranging program and it's interesting to me to learn how/why it's being used in various parts of the country. $8/bu corn for a few years resulted in a bunch on folks not applying for re-enrollment and a whole lot of wetland determinations. It's slacked some, but when tillable ground is going for north of $10K/ac it makes in financially tough for many landowners to sign a CRP contract.