Essays

Moseying: Exploring the Natural World

Help the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department find out where the prairie chickens live
January 31, 2007

“If you want to find a prairie chicken, ride a green horse across the pasture,” the rancher commented as we turned into his stretch of Yoakum County shinoak and sandsage covered sanddunes. We were at the southeastern end of a band of mostly vegetated sanddunes that stretch 40 miles northwest, out past Milnesand, New Mexico. June Leland Wildlife Foundation (JLWF) executive director David Crum and his wife Kay were also in the vehicle. The Crums manage a leased ranch for the JLWF specifically for Lesser Prairie Chickens in the same band of sanddunes.

Along with the prairie chickens, these vegetated sanddunes are home to some of the largest mule deer in Texas. Pronghorn (antelope) are also common in the region. “Driving around in a pickup you will almost never see a prairie chicken. Even when we turn off the two rut tracks and go bouncing in 4-wheel drive across the pastures the prairie chickens will not jump up. They hear us coming and sneak off. Their camouflage is so superb even in the winter that we can be 30 feet from one and never see them. But an inexperienced horse, for some reason, will get the chickens acting up a little. And, of course, sometimes you get “a rodeo ride” from a horse that never has seen a prairie chicken.”

Come spring, Heather Whitlaw of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) will be coordinating a survey for lesser prairie chickens in suitable habitat. She is currently looking for more volunteers. If you are interested in helping out, please call her (1-806-742-4968). All that is needed is the willingness to drive designated roads in suitable habitat and listen for “booming” (the mating chorus) for the first two or three hours of any morning beginning in late March through early May.

From TPWD helicopter surveys and reports from a number of ranches it is presently thought approximately 5000 lesser prairie chickens currently live in Texas. Their range is fragmented. Originally hundreds of thousands were found in Texas from the northern tip of the panhandle and all the northwestern edge of the state to the rolling plains just east of the Llano Estacado. In the winter part of the population would migrate southeast to the northwestern edge of the Edwards Plateau.

Ms. Whitlaw, based in Lubbock, is the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Wildlife Diversity specialist. TPWD is interested in promoting the conservation of the species and preventing any attempt to make the species an endangered species. If that occurs, then landowners will bear another burden of unwanted regulation.

Records of the Midland Naturalists show that the last record of a lesser prairie chicken in Midland County was in 1954. A small number of prairie chickens still live in northern Andrews County, but the next area to the north where the birds have been recorded are throughout the band of sanddunes we were investigating. The only other region with somewhat contiguous populations of the species is north of the Canadian River north and east of the town of Canadian. In recent years the towns of Canadian and Milnesand have developed “prairie chicken ecotourism.” With several million birdwatchers interested in viewing the species, these towns host folks from all over the United States and other countries every spring.

As we bounced over the wet sanddunes we spotted four mule deer. One doe had cropped ears. The only explanation that we could come up with was that her ears had been frozen sometime in the past. (To see a photograph of her and other scenes from the trip, visit this photoessay.) The other two does and the buck were in fine shape. They remained motionless less than 75 yards from the truck. When we commented on their tame behavior, the rancher told us that no one had legally hunted the ranch in two years, and then it was only some friends from Central Texas that came out on a weekend.

About an hour later we spotted some quickly running animals in the far distance. We thought, at first, that they were more mule deer. “Those are hogs, feral hogs.” Five big ones had caught our eye, and they ran in plain view along the northeast-facing base of a dune still covered with snow from the storms of the previous week. When we spotted another twenty or more barreling over a saddle in the dunes in a different direction we realized the big ones might be keeping in sight of us to distract us from the others, which included young ones.

“Feral hogs moved into the sanddune belt of Yoakum County about five years ago, moving in from the north and east. The hogs are proving to be disastrous for the peanut farmers in the region.” The rancher had informed us earlier before he had left us to tend to other business. Prairie chicken biologists believe that feral hogs will prove to be quite destructive to the success rate of prairie chicken eggs. Feral hogs eat anything on the ground – eggs, dead animals, acorns of the shin oaks, lizards, snakes, mushrooms and more.

Some of the sandy land in the region has recently been root plowed for organic peanut production. Folks that think they are “doing good for the earth” by eating organic peanut butter are actually encouraging the destruction of the habitat for the lesser prairie chicken. The hogs and new farms in the region are new threats that the prairie chickens face that will cause a further decline in the species. This makes Ms. Whitlaw’s volunteer surveys rather important, as they will supply more data to the scientists studying the species with the helicopter surveys and rancher reports.

The region is relatively remote and less than 20,000 people live in the 1,500 square mile area. Other than the efforts of the promoters of the festivals at Milnesand, the June Welder Wildlife Foundation, a handful of scientists like Ms. Whitlaw, and a handful of ranchers that love the species, no one knows much about the area’s population of prairie chickens (and as a result the public does not know about their predicament.)

Related photo essay: Lesser Prairie Chicken