The Free Press, Mankato, MN

Outdoors

October 11, 2009

Madelia has long history with pheasant season

By John Cross

MADELIA — Besides being a Mecca for pheasant hunters during the best days of Minnesota pheasant hunters, rural Madelia was the site for one of two major pheasant hatcheries in Minnesota.

The site now serves as the Farmland Wildlife Populations and Research Group facility. The other state-operated game farm was located at what is now the Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area.

In 1929, the Minnesota Department of Game and Fish purchased a 160-acre farm located five miles south of Madelia for the purpose of raising pheasant for stocking.

According to Al Berner, a retired Minnesota Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologist, the first broods of pheasants were hatched and raised in 1930.

The game farm, which was equipped to hatch and raise pheasants for stocking programs, remained in operation through the mid-1950s.

Originally, the state game farm raised some of the birds until they were 12 weeks-old but in its final years, reverted to raising only day-old chicks that went to sportsman’s groups to care for and eventually release.

At peak production, the facility raised more than 100,000 birds annually.

Berner said that by the 1950s, most wildlife biologists were convinced that habitat and not stocking programs were the most effective ways to boost wild pheasant numbers.

However, political and public concerns about discontinuing stocking programs kept the game farm running.

Finally, a state budget crunch in the late 1950s produced spending cuts that effectively ended state-sponsored pheasant hatching operations.

In 1974, the present research group moved into the facility. Ten years ago, the old structure underwent extensive renovations and remodeling.

While an original barn remains, the rest of the buildings have long since been removed. The farm is now the Winfred Taylor WMA, named after a longtime employee at the game farm facility, and is open to hunting.

But even more than 40 years after its original function as a game farm ended, here and there, portions of an old predator-proof fence that encircled the entire farm can be seen.

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