Let’s have November to remember

Upland-game seasons opening Saturday; firearm deer on way

Ivica Kuhtic-Hrdjun goes to a beekeepers’ meeting, and talk turns to bucks when Mike Rusnak shows him a photo of a big buck stuck on a backyard fence in Glenwood.

It’s that time of the year. Elusive bucks loose their sense in rut and show the rationality of teenage boys. (Mike Murphy’s Buck of the Week and other nominations show that activity picked up on Halloween weekend.)

Overall, this weekend should be the second-biggest for hunters in Illinois. The weekend of the first firearm deer season this month will draw more than 200,000 into fields and woods, but this weekend will have close to those numbers.

Seasons for upland game — pheasant, quail and rabbit — open Saturday. This was a cultural event in many places decades ago, with hundreds of thousands venturing afield.

Those days are gone. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources estimates only 15,549 hunted pheasants last year, even with an increase of 4 percent. Rabbit hunters dropped 6 percent to 34,874, and quail hunters increased 5 percent to 11,328.

The drop in upland-game hunting is a function of landscape (suburbanization, farming practices) and cultural (other pursuits, focus on deer hunting) changes.

Upland prospects remain largely the same. Road surveys for pheasants were similar to those in 2014. But here’s a tip: Officials found that areas with State Acres For Wildlife Conservation Reserve Program practice showed positive trends.

The road-kill index for rabbits was down 21 percent (1.6 rabbits per 1,000 miles traveled). That surprises me. I thought the wet summer led to better cover. The number of quail counted during road surveys was slightly higher, and the number of stops where quail were seen or heard was slightly lower than in 2014.

Nov. 11 traditionally was the peak of duck migration. With climate change, that date moves toward Thanksgiving. A push of waterfowl did come over the Halloween weekend because of the weather. At Heidecke Lake, nine boats reported 17 ducks Saturday, then 11 boats had five geese and 19 ducks Sunday.

The next two weeks will be prime for bowhunters aiming for rutting big bucks.

I asked forest wildlife program manager Paul Shelton what date is the peak of the rut. Using the deer/vehicle accidents as an index, he said the average from 2005 to 2013 was Nov. 13.

‘‘Although annual peaks varied by as much as a week before that to almost a week after,’’ he cautioned.

One thing that should help all hunters is the incredibly fast crop harvest. On Sunday, corn and soybean harvests in Illinois were 96 percent complete.

Ice scoop

Despite temperatures in the 70s this week, ice will come. I hear The Wetlands Initiative plans at least one day of ice fishing this winter at Hennepin-Hopper lakes.

Stray cast

Republican presidential candidates bashing debate moderators are like ‘‘fishermen’’ being skunked at a trout farm.